Dante

After I left her room that night, I didn’t go straight to bed. I rolled down the hall and into my office instead. The sound of the wheels against the floor was the only thing I could hear. When I stopped, the silence pressed in around me.

The papers Valeria had been working on earlier were still on my desk. The room still carried her faint scent, soft and clean, the kind that stayed behind long after she left. I didn’t touch anything. I just sat there, staring at the papers, ...