I blinked.
She lived in a tiny stone house at the end of a forgotten street… and talked to plants like they were her friends.How much of a threat could she possibly be?
There was a dissonance in watching her.
A woman who survived a massacre and rebuilt herself from the remaining scraps.A massacre I took part in.She should have been dead.She should have fallen apart.Yet there she was… alive, unaware, breathing the same air as the man who helped annihilate her family.
And with every second she stood there, something unwelcome settled in my chest.
She was real.She was human.She was standing right in front of me.And I didn’t have a plan.
I watched her cross the street, keeping my head lowered so she wouldn’t notice me.When she was far enough ahead, I got out of the car and followed her.
9
Atlas
The cobblestone steps were uneven.She moved quickly, turning down narrow lanes that wove through the older part of the city.Clotheslines hung overhead.Window shutters creaked.People sat outside their doors talking in low voices, barely glancing at her.
She walked like she’d done that route a hundred times.
She turned into a tight alley where the buildings leaned toward each other, almost touching.At the end of it sat a small restaurant that was nothing more than a doorway, a faded sign, and three tables set outside.The kind of place locals relied on and tourists never found.
She greeted the old man standing at the entrance with a small nod.He didn’t offer her a smile, but a small grunt of recognition.She took an apron from a hook by the door, tied it around her waist, pushed her hair behind her ears, and walked inside.
So that was where she worked.
I stepped back into the shadows and waited.
Through the open doorway, I could see enough.She moved from table to table, taking orders quietly.Her smile was polite but distant, like she was giving the bare minimum required to function.When men looked at her for too long, she lowered her gaze and shifted her body away from them.
She never let anyone stand too close and appeared to be listening to every sound around her.
I saw the way her shoulders tensed each time the bell above the door rang.
She still carried her trauma after fifteen years.I wondered if she ever had anyone to help her deal with it, or if she fought it alone.
Hours passed.The light shifted from afternoon to early evening.She moved through the heat, wiping tables with quick, practiced motions, keeping herself small even when the room filled up.For a place buried in a side alley, the restaurant stayed busy—more crowded than I expected, almost every table occupied.
She’d managed to build a life there.But I could see she hadn’t rebuilt her sense of safety.
When her shift ended, she slipped out the side door with her head down.She didn’t rush, but she moved with purpose, walking fast enough to avoid anyone getting close.She took narrow streets instead of the main road, choosing routes with fewer people, fewer eyes.
She never looked over her shoulder, but her posture said she was tracking every sound behind her.Every footstep.Every shuffle of movement within reach, telling me she had good instincts.
I followed her from a distance until she reached her house, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.
A small lamp flicked on, and the glow revealed her moving through a house smaller than most closets I’d walked through.
I stayed on the other side of the street, hands in my pockets, watching.
I could have walked across and pushed that door open with one hand.I could have ended this right then and there.Finished what I’d failed to accomplish fifteen years ago.Put my unease to rest; one less problem to worry about.
But that would have drawn attention.A neighbor might hear something.Someone might look out a window.The police might actually give a damn in a neighborhood like this.Killing her now would have been messy, stupid, and desperate.And I didn’t do desperate.
I looked back at the window.She moved slowly through the room, stretching her neck like she was exhausted.Life didn’t break her.It just changed her shape.Bent her into something that wasn’t easy to categorize as either victim or threat.
And that was what gnawed at me.