The roar of the crowd was a physical force, a wave of heat and sound that washed over the stage. Lyra Hawthorne held the final note, her voice pure and strong, a silver thread weaving through the thunderous applause. The lights were blinding, a constellation of artificial suns that erased everything but the energy of a thousand souls singing her words back to her.
Then, silence.
The only light was a soft, dim glow from a whale-shaped nightlight in the corner of the room. The only sound was the gentle shush of her own breath and the quiet, rhythmic sigh of the small child in her arms. Rowan. Her son. He smelled of milk and sleep, his small body a warm, solid weight against her chest.
This was her new cadence. The roar, then the whisper. The stage, then the nursery. A life cleaved in two, both halves finally, impossibly, whole.
She placed Rowan in his crib, her movements practiced and fluid. His dark curls were plastered to his forehead, his tiny mouth parted slightly. A year old. An entire year had passed in a blur of sleepless nights and sold-out shows.
A year of peace.
Zara found her in the kitchen, staring out the window at the city lights that glittered like scattered diamonds.
“He down for the count?” Zara asked, pouring two glasses of wine.
“For now.” Lyra smiled, the expression still feeling new on her face. “He’s mastering the art of the false surrender.”
They settled onto the sofa, the silence between them comfortable. Zara had been the constant, the anchor through the storm of the last two years. A callback to a time when her life was defined by what she had lost, not what she had built.
“So, the party plans are set?” Zara swirled her wine. “Miniature cupcakes, a ball pit, and enough sugar to power a small nation. Rowan’s first birthday is going to be an event.”
“It’s more for us than for him,” Lyra admitted. “He’d be just as happy with a cardboard box.”
“We’re celebrating that we all survived the year.” Zara’s gaze softened. “And that you’re… you. The real you.”
Lyra knew what came next. The gentle, probing question that always surfaced when they spoke of milestones.
“Have you thought about… him?”
Lyra didn’t need to ask who. There was only one him. Caspian. A name that was once a wound, now just a scar.
“I think about him every month,” she said, her voice even. She nodded toward the small stack of mail on her counter. “When the statement arrives.”
Her peace had a price, paid on a monthly schedule.
Later, after Zara had left, Lyra picked up the envelope. The paper was thick, expensive. The letterhead was stark: The Rowan Hawthorne Trust.
She slit it open. Inside was not a letter, not a note, just a single page of numbers. A balance sheet. Deposits made, interest accrued. A cold, efficient accounting of a father’s duty, performed at a legally mandated distance.
Caspian had kept his word completely. For twelve months, there had been nothing. No calls. No emails. No attempts to breach the wall she had built around her new life. Just this monthly statement, a sterile reminder of the man who funded his son’s future but had no place in his present.
She respected the discipline it must have taken. She was grateful for the silence.
But as she folded the paper, a dull ache echoed in her chest. An old ghost. She filed the statement away with the others, a neat stack of paper that chronicled a year of perfect, heartbreaking absence.
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