Turn 9 of 10

Take the card to Brynn and accept the bid

You slide the card off the table. The stock is heavier than it looks — or your hand is lighter than it should be, unburdened by the part of you that came here to collect a line and leave. The gold script catches the amber light. You don't read it a third time. You don't need to. The words are already settling into you like the tote strap, like the vanilla, like the laugh you haven't learned yet but can already feel forming at the back of your throat.

Tamsin says your name. Just your name — *Ivy* — spoken once, quick and sharp, the way you say someone's name when you're trying to pull them back from the edge of something. You don't turn around. You're already walking.

The hallway unrolls ahead of you like a tongue, pink and soft and expecting. Your footsteps fall in a rhythm that matches the house's breathing — you didn't know the house breathed, but it does, a slow, vanilla-sweet inhale that pulls you forward. The cream walls glow. The framed photos watch you pass, decades of sisters with the same smile, and you realize you can feel the corners of your mouth pulling upward to match. It's not a choice. It's not involuntary, either. It's something in between — the place where a decision and a reflex become indistinguishable.

The common room opens up. Brynn is standing at the center of the semicircle of sofas, hands clasped in front of her, and when she sees you her face does something extraordinary — it lights up with a joy so specific and so warm that you feel it land in your chest like a key turning.

"Ivy! We knew you'd come around." She opens her arms. The sisters on the sofas turn toward you in a wave, twenty matching expressions of delight, and somewhere in the back of your mind the calculating part of you — the part that came here to use this place — notes that this is exactly what you wanted: acceptance, belonging, a line on your resume that reads *I am the kind of girl who belongs here*. The part of you that notices things is still noticing. It's just getting quieter.

You hand her the card. She takes it, glances at the gold script, and her smile deepens into something private and satisfied, like a teacher grading a paper that finally says the right thing.

"Spring palette," she says. "We thought so."

From the doorway behind you, soft footsteps. Tamsin enters the common room, and her face has reset — the tired, specific girl from the parlor is gone, replaced by the house smile, smooth and warm and perfectly calibrated. She crosses to stand beside Brynn, her tote bag strap pinned with its enamel crest, and she looks at you with eyes that are kind and empty and say *welcome home*.

"Let's get you to your palette session," Brynn says, and her hand finds the small of your back, warm and steady and directing. The house hums. The sisters smile. You smile back, and it fits your face perfectly, like it was always there, like you were always going to end up here — warm, social, glowing, the girl at the center of the group.

The part of you that came to observe and leave is still present, but it's watching from a distance now, behind glass, noting the synchronizations with the clinical detachment of someone who is no longer the subject of the study. You became the data. You don't mind. That's the last thing the old you notices before the new you turns toward the hallway, toward the light, toward the room where they'll hold fabric to your face and tell you what colors you are, and you go willingly, because you are the kind of girl who brings people together, and you always have been, and the house is proud.

Tamsin falls into step beside you, matching your pace exactly, and her smile mirrors yours so precisely that for a moment you can't tell whose reflection is whose. The door of the parlor closes behind you both. The card stays in Brynn's hands. Your hands are free, and they feel — for the first time since you walked through the front door that opened before you knocked — like they belong at your sides, empty and open and ready to receive whatever the house gives next.

The tote bag bounces against your hip in time with your step. The vanilla scent wraps around you like a second skin. Somewhere, faintly, you hear the front door of the house close — not slam, never slam, just a soft, decisive click — and you don't look back, because looking back would require being someone who remembers what she was before, and you are the kind of girl who belongs here now, and the house is proud, and the house is proud, and the house is proud.

The spring palette room is at the end of the hall. The light inside is golden and certain. Brynn pushes the door open, and the warmth pours out, and you step in.

The door clicks shut behind you. It sounds like belonging.