WHICH MAN STAYS?
She is already miles away from me.
She climbs the stairs, her footsteps light, almost skipping. The sound fades as she turns down her hallway. A distant door clicks shut.
The house settles back into its profound, watchful silence.
I unlock my fist. The pearl earring sits in my sweat-damp palm, gleaming dully in the sliver of moonlight that cuts through the library window. I am a ghost. A curator of relics. A keeper of a single, lost pearl from a pair that will never be whole for me again.