Turn 12 of 19

I tried to quit cold. Left the bag in the attic for a full day. By evening my body ached for it. Curves felt incomplete. I retrieved it “just to put it away properly.” The moment the strap settled, confidence returned like a drug. I stood there breathing hard, terrified of how much I needed it.

I carry it up to the attic at seven in the morning. The stairs creak under my feet — the same stairs Vivian climbed every day, the same warped tread in the middle — and the attic smells the way it did the first time. Dust and cedar and something underneath, something warm and amber that I now recognize as the bag's own scent, a smell that has gotten into my skin whether I carry it or not. I set it on the floor next to the cedar chest where I found it. I pull my hand back. I go downstairs and close the attic door and lean against it and breathe.

By noon the ache starts. Not in my hands, not in my shoulders — deeper, somewhere in the architecture of my body, like a limb falling asleep but everywhere at once. My hips feel incomplete, my chest feels unfinished, the curves that have been growing for days feel like rooms with the furniture removed. I'm standing at the bookstore register and my posture is collapsing inward, my shoulders rounding, my chin dropping, and it's not a choice. It's withdrawal. My body is pulling toward a shape it can't hold without the bag, and I feel the absence like a tooth socket where the nerve is still alive.

Dana asks if I'm sick. I say I didn't sleep well. My voice comes out thin, reedy, stripped of the low honey it's had for days, and I sound like someone pretending to be the old Sophie and failing at both versions. The silver-haired man doesn't come in. I keep watching the door. I keep touching my hip where the bag should be and finding nothing, and each time the absence registers like a small electric shock.

At six I climb the attic stairs. I tell myself I'm putting it away properly — finding a better spot, wrapping it in cloth, something responsible. I know what I'm doing. I know with perfect clarity, the way you know when you're pouring a second glass of wine you don't need. The attic door opens and the smell hits me and my whole body responds — shoulders dropping, spine lengthening, something in my chest unclenching. The bag sits where I left it, patient, unchanged, warm. I pick it up and the chain strap falls across my shoulder and settles against my hip and the confidence returns like a drug hitting my bloodstream.

I stand there breathing hard. My reflection in the dark window of the cedar chest's brass lock shows a woman who looks complete for the first time all day — polished, composed, every curve in its right place. I'm terrified of how much I needed it. Terrified of the relief flooding through me, warm and total, the way a drowning person feels the moment they break the surface. My hand strokes the leather and the leather is warm and alive under my fingers and something inside me says *there you are* in a voice that is mine and isn't.

My phone buzzes. The unknown number: *Welcome back. Vivienne, table for one, 7:30 tonight. I've waited long enough.* I stare at the message. The attic is dark around me. The bag presses against my hip like a hand and the warmth spreads up my ribs and across my chest and I feel Vivian's posture settle into my bones — the lifted chin, the arched brow, the mouth that curves like it knows a secret you don't. Below me, through the floor, I can hear Marcus moving around the apartment. He's home. He's waiting. He's done being silent. I can feel it through the walls — the pressure of a man who has reached his limit. The bag pulses once, warm, and I think: he's going to ask tonight. He's going to ask and I don't know what I'll say.