Chapter Two

I sat down across from them, keeping my back straight and my hands still. The silence stretched between us like a rope about to snap, and I could feel Elora watching me the way a cat watches a bird through a window; curious, patient, already certain of the ending.

Before anyone could speak, the doorbell rang again.

Nathaniel frowned and went to answer it, and I heard familiar voices in the hallway; too loud, too cheerful, too early for a casual visit. My mother swept into the living room first, her heels clicking against the hardwood, her arms already open wide. She didn't look at me. She never looked at me first.

"Elora," my mother cried, her voice cracking with tears I hadn't seen her shed in years. "My baby. You're home."

She rushed past me like I was a piece of furniture and threw her arms around Elora, pulling her close and rocking her back and forth like she had just returned from war instead of two years of selfish silence. Elora melted into the embrace, her face pressed against our mother's shoulder, and when she looked up at me over that shoulder her eyes were sharp and aware,not soft at all.

My father followed behind, slower and quieter but with the same warmth reserved for one daughter only. He patted Elora's head and squeezed her shoulder and said, "It's good to have you back," in a voice he never used with me. Richard was his name, but I had stopped calling him Dad years ago, somewhere between the birthday he forgot and the graduation he missed because Elora had a cold.

I stayed in my chair. No one invited me to stand.

Clara, my mother, finally turned to me with the kind of smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Elena, don't just sit there. Your sister needs tea. The good one, the jasmine in the blue tin."

No hello, how are you, not even a glance at my face to see if I had been crying.

I stood up and walked to the kitchen, and my legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Behind me, I heard my mother fussing over Elora's weight, her hair, her travels, every question a caress. Richard asked Nathaniel about work, but his eyes stayed on Elora, proud and relieved.

I filled the kettle and leaned against the counter while the water heated. The kitchen was the only room in this house that still felt like mine. I had painted the cabinets myself, chosen the tiles, and arranged the herbs on the windowsill. But standing there, listening to my family laugh in the other room, I felt like a servant in my own home.

The kettle clicked off. I made the tea carefully, the way my mother liked it, and carried the tray back to the living room.

No one thanked me.

Elora took her cup with a soft "thank you, big sister" that sounded sweet but felt like a knife, and my mother patted the cushion beside her for Elora to sit closer. They wanted to hear everything; where she had been, what she had seen, why she had stayed away so long. Elora told them about Paris and Milan and a man named something French that I didn't catch, and every word made my mother sigh with pleasure.

Nathaniel stood by the window, watching them. He looked like he wanted to join the circle but didn't know how.

I sat in my chair again, the one no one had asked me to leave, and drank my tea in silence.

"I was thinking," my mother announced, clapping her hands together like she had just solved a great puzzle, "we should have a welcome home dinner tomorrow night. Right here."

"What a wonderful idea," Elora said, and her eyes slid to me. "Elena can cook. She's so good at that."

It wasn't a question nor was it a request. It was an assignment, delivered with a smile, and my mother nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Of course. Elena will handle everything. You just rest, sweetheart."

I opened my mouth to say something, I don't know what, maybe that I had plans,that I was tired, I was a person and not a chef but Nathaniel's voice cut through before I could speak. "That sounds fine."

I closed my mouth and nodded, because fighting had never worked, and I had learned years ago that silence was safer than honesty.

The conversation moved on without me. My father asked Nathaniel about some business deal. My mother asked Elora about a man she had met in Italy. I sat there with my cold tea and my folded hands and my invisible face, and no one noticed when I stood up and walked to the garden.

The air outside was cool and quiet, and for a moment I just stood there breathing, letting the sky hold everything I couldn't say. The garden was my other hiding place; the roses I had planted, the lavender I had trimmed, the little bench where I sat on mornings when Nathaniel had already left for work and the house felt empty even with me inside it.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Marcus.

"Are you okay?" his message read. Simple and direct. The kind of question no one in that house would ever ask me.

I typed back: "My sister is back. My parents are here. I'm making tea for everyone."

His reply came fast: "That's not what I asked."

I stared at those words for a long time. Then I typed: "No. I'm not okay."

"I'm coming to see you tomorrow," Marcus said. "Don't argue."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him to stay away, that his visits only made things more complicated, that Nathaniel already looked at him sideways every time he showed up. But I was so tired of being alone, tired of having no one in my corner, that I couldn't make my fingers form the refusal.

"Fine," I wrote. "But not here. There's a coffee shop on Fifth Street. Meet me there at noon."

"See you then."

I put my phone away and walked back inside. The laughter had grown louder. My mother was showing Elora something on her phone; old photos, probably the ones where Elora smiled and I stood in the background, half out of frame. Nathaniel had moved closer to them, standing behind the couch with his hand resting on the back near Elora's shoulder.

He didn't notice me coming in.

No one did.

I stood in the doorway for a full minute, watching my family celebrate my sister's return, and I felt something settle in my chest, not sadness anymore, but something harder and colder. I didn't know what to call it yet, but it felt like the beginning of an ending.

Later that night, after my parents had finally left and Elora had retreated to the guest bedroom and Nathaniel had gone upstairs without saying goodnight, I sat alone in the dark living room with my phone in my hands. I was thinking about Marcus, about tomorrow, about whether I had the strength to actually leave.

Then my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.

"Your sister doesn't deserve him. And neither do you. But I can help."

I read it three times. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat.

Who is this? I typed back.

The response came after a long pause, long enough that I thought they had stopped answering.

"Someone who has been watching. Someone who knows what it's like to be invisible. Don't tell anyone about this message. I'll contact you again when it's safe."

I stared at the screen until it went dark.

Someone was watching. The person had seen me.

And for the first time in two years, I felt something I had almost forgotten.

Hope.