The Ashbourne house had never seemed so big.
Since Althea left, silence had settled in for good, thick,
almost tangible.
Every room breathed absence.
The walls, once warmed by laughter and voices,
now seemed to hold their breath.
Sylus no longer played the piano.
He spent his days in the study,
staring at the same files without reading them,
listening to the fire slowly dying in the fireplace.
The nights were worse.
Sleep came late, too late, and vanished at the slightest memory.
Sometimes he still thought he could hear footsteps in the hallway.
The light click of Althea's heels,
Catarina's voice calling from the apartment,
but they were only echoes.
Ghosts from the past who refused to understand that they no longer belonged here.
A letter from Althea had arrived a week earlier.
Short. Cold.
"I'm fine. I'm staying with my aunt for a while.
Don't worry."
Nothing else. Not another word.
Not a ''Dad.'' Not an ''I love you.''
Sylus had reread those three lines until he knew the shape of the letters by heart.
They said everything he feared: that she wouldn't come back,
or at least not as before.
In the morning, he went down to the kitchen,
more out of habit than necessity.
The coffee grew cold before he even touched it.
The house, too tidy, gave him the impression of a stage emptied of its actors.
And every day, he told himself he was going to leave.
Leave the city, the house, the past.
But he didn't move.
As if the walls had tamed him, too.
One evening, Damien knocked on the door.
He didn't really wait to be told to come in.
He had the look of someone who knows they've come too late.
"Any news?" he asked simply.
Sylus shook his head.
"No. She wrote to me, but... there's nothing to say in reply."
Damien was silent for a moment, then said:
"And Catarina?"
Sylus looked up.
"Gone. Without a word."
"Do you know where?"
"No. And maybe that's for the best."
A heavy silence followed.
The fire crackled softly.
Damien finally said:
"You've lost twice, Sylus. But it's not inevitable."
Sylus smiled bitterly.
"It's not inevitable, Damien. It's a habit."
Silence fell again.
This time, Damien said nothing.
He knew there was nothing left to save here,
only to wait for time to do what it always does:
erase without repairing.
When he left, the house returned to what it had become: a mausoleum.
And Sylus, alone in the office, murmured almost to himself:
"I don't know what I'm waiting for anymore."
Outside, the snow began to fall again.
Slowly. Persistently.
As if the world refused to turn the page.