Page 72 of Reverence

Returning to her empty apartment was an unpleasant shock. Gabriel had moved out weeks ago and yet the place still held so much of him. Juliette fought tears. Pictures, slippers, a sweater she had commandeered and he graciously never took back. He was everywhere.

The knock dragged her mind to the present, and she swiped at her eyes hastily. It was probably Francesca or Helena, who had a key and never really knocked. Still, today was such an odd day.

She opened the door and the day got stranger. But also more beautiful. Overwhelmingly so. Juliette wanted to slap herself for even thinking it, but who was to know? She’d never tell a soul.

Katarina Vyatka was standing on her doorstep, holding a folded piece of paper and an envelope. And she brought all the beauty with her. Time had been powerless over her. She was a vision still.

No crimson blood, nor white satin to echo the first time Juliette saw her. In a simple, demure black dress, and without saying a word, Katarina opened every scar Juliette had spent years sewing back together.

The blue eyes were so wide, so bright, as if she had been scared of who might be on the other side of the threshold, as if she had been afraid that the door would open at all. Katarina’s right arm was raised halfway, perhaps about to knock again, and Juliette watched it fall to her side in slow motion.

A second passed, a day, a week, a month. A year. And then seven and they were here, in a place that wasn’t theirs, in a city that never slept and that had never been as full of light as the one they both belonged to.

Katarina’s face was translucent. She seemed thin. Much thinner than she had been years ago, and she was willowy even then. Her angular cheeks had taken on a sharp quality that looked almost gaunt in the dispersed light of Juliette’s doorway.

She had to say something, because this staredown had gone on for eternity and Juliette knew she’d start crawling out of her skin if it continued for a moment longer.

Except Katarina spoke first, and Juliette felt her own shoulders relax at the sheer sound of the silence breaking like glass between them.

“I apologize for showing up unannounced.”

Juliette watched this almost stranger bite her lip, fingers crumpling the envelope in her hands tightly, paper crinkling under them. Well, at least she wasn’t the only anxious one.

Words were stuck in Juliette’s throat. She had no idea what might come out of her mouth if she let them. Seven years was along time, and seven years was a blink of an eye. And it turned out that no matter how many times she imagined this meeting—and to her credit, she was woman enough to admit that she had done quite a lot of imagining—Juliette had not been ready for it.

She moved aside and gestured to Katarina to come in. The wide eyes followed the motion of the black stick with something too close to pity for Juliette’s comfort, and so she very deliberately set the cane down by the door, the wood making a satisfying sound against the sideboard.

Katarina drew a deep breath and took a step in, then another, and in no time at all Juliette watched as the one person she had never expected to cross this threshold stood in the middle of her living room.

“Life is so bizarre.” She didn’t bother explaining herself even as she regretted that these were her first words to Katarina.

Her fingers pushed the door closed and, willing her legs to move, Juliette crossed the space she had called her home for the last seven years, trying not to see it through Katarina’s eyes. She had a feeling it would be found lacking, and that made her irrationally angry.

The rooms were New York small, nothing like their place on Rue de Rivoli with its airy, tall ceilings and massive windows letting in the gentle Parisian morning light.

Belatedly, it registered that she had thought of the Parisian apartment as theirs, and she cursed herself for a fool. Seven years and this woman still held her in the palm of her hand.

Katarina’s impossibly wide eyes seemed to widen even more at the cursing.

“I'm sorry… Juliette… I’ll go.”

But she did not move from the spot where Gabriel had stood just five days ago, and Juliette felt her chest simply cave in. The armchair was the closest harbor for her tired body, and she satdown gingerly, wondering if even a tiny flinch would shatter her bones. Where had this fragility come from?

“Why are you here?”

It seemed like a fair question to ask someone you’d not seen for a lifetime, and yet it also felt like the most foolish thing to say out loud. Tears threatened, screams too, and Juliette clamped her lips tighter, desperately clinging to whatever social graces she still possessed.

Katarina appeared to fight an inner battle of her own, as she kept standing motionless in the middle of the room. Juliette’s worry about what she might see and what she might think about how she lived now was in vain, as Katarina looked at nothing but Juliette herself.

The eyes gleamed with sadness. But then, they always looked sad. Except this time they were almost lifeless, and as someone who just came from a funeral, that angered Juliette more. How dare she? How dare Katarina Vyatka be here and look like she had been buried for the past seven years?

“Gabriel wrote to me a few months ago. He gave me your address.” Katarina unclenched her fingers from around the envelope and Juliette recognized the familiar chicken scratch. Gabriel’s cursive had always been atrocious.

Well, isn’t this swell.

Her dead best friend from beyond his early grave sent her the ex she had grieved for years. The ex who broke her, who ruined her life, who took everything from her.

Juliette smiled and then let out a peel of laughter. It sounded a touch hysterical. The second one was no longer just a touch so. The desperation and loneliness rang loudly.

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