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Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Shell
The restaurant’s ceiling was a ring of glass, and Clara Evans liked the way it held the night. Stars pressed like thumbprints above the curve of the skylight, and candle flames painted soft halos on the reflective plates. She had chosen this place for the way it made everything seem held and orderly. Even the laughter was softened by velvet banquettes and flowers set at precise angles.
Daniel raised his glass. “To Clara,” he said, with that effortless warmth strangers fell for. “To the woman who draws light into rooms and makes them kinder.”
Applause and clinking cutlery. Clara kept her smile small. She had learned to keep things contained; it was a protection and a pose in one.
Across the table, Elise’s eyes glittered—the kind of glitter that came from tears held back or pleasure pressed down. Elise had been in Clara’s life since university, through bad apartments and late-night coffees and a thousand small loyalties. Her hand touched Daniel’s wrist as she laughed at some joke. It was nothing, it was playful, it was normal—Clara told herself, and then told herself to stop telling herself.
They ate. They told stories. Daniel leaned back in his chair, attention bouncing between guests and Clara’s face with the same quick energy that made her love him and sometimes hate him. He could make any room spin around his grin.
Near dessert, the conversation slid to flawed buildings in the city and the corrupt development board. Clara said something about red tape and shade studies; Daniel teased her for being too righteous; Elise watched Daniel with an expression Clara couldn’t parse. The look flitted by like a shadow across a wall—there and gone.
On the ride home, Clara rested her head against the cool window. The city blurred past in long bands of light. “You were charming,” she said.
“I try.” Daniel reached for her hand on the center console, squeezed. “Promotion next month. I know it.”
She squeezed back. “I hope.”
At the apartment, Clara kicked off her heels in the hallway and lined them up side by side. She stood a second longer, making sure the toes aligned. It calmed her. It always had. Order was her way of saying to the world: I won’t be surprised today.
In bed, she lay awake while Daniel’s breathing settled. Above their heads, the ceiling was a crisp, painted white—the kind of white she specified on site visits, the kind with a number and a name. She stared and thought of the ring of glass above the restaurant and how it framed the dark.
Her mother would have liked the ceiling, she thought. Or maybe not. Her mother had only ever liked things that looked like escape.
Clara turned on her side, away from Daniel. He reached for her, a sleep-drunk arm thrown around her waist that she could have mistaken for protection if she had let herself. She did not move. She kept very still. She slept at last, into a dream of walking across panes of glass, her heels too sharp, the night staring back from below.
