The audience stood again.
This time, Clarissa did not feel overwhelmed by the noise.
She felt held by it.
After the speech, after the photographs, after Arthur pretended he had something in his eye, Clarissa slipped onto the balcony for air.
Snow had begun to fall over Cleveland, soft and silver.
Nathaniel found her there.
“You disappeared,” he said.
“I’m practicing doing it less tragically.”
He smiled.
For a while, they stood in comfortable silence.
Then he removed his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.
Clarissa looked at him. “You know I can buy my own jacket.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why this one is only a gesture.”
She laughed softly.
Below them, the city glittered—not like Chloe’s diamonds, cold and borrowed, but like windows filled with life.
Clarissa thought of the woman she had been that night, fingers trembling over an old SIM card, believing she was calling home because she had nowhere else to go.
