Chapter 99: The Hollow and the Haven

Chapter 99: The Hollow and the Haven

The garden party was an experiment.

Her Maman and mére had called it "a chance to open the gates a little." The Ainsley estate, usually quiet and intimate, had been transformed: long tables lined with fruit tarts and sparkling lemonade, string lights crisscrossing overhead, a hired storyteller tucked beneath the sycamore tree.

Children came in flocks — laughing, shrieking, chasing soap bubbles across the lawn. Eva stood still at first, her fingers wrapped around the strap of her violin case, scanning the crowd as if waiting for something — someone.

Seraphina wasn't there. She'd said she'd try, but university life had a way of chaining her to her desk.

So Eva stood alone under the wisteria archway, her curls pinned back with a navy velvet bow, her white dress crisp as clouds.

"Go on," her mother Evelyn had urged. "Play. Just see."

So she tried.

It began with chalk.

A small boy offered her a pink stick with a gap-toothed grin. "Wanna draw spaceships?"

Eva blinked. "I don't really know how."

"It's easy," said a girl beside him. "They're just triangles with fire."

Within minutes, she was crouched beside them, sketching flaming vessels across the brick path, adding spirals of stars and musical notes orbiting their rocket trails.

Then came tag. Then hide and seek. Then biscuits behind the greenhouse with a girl who wore butterfly clips and whispered that bees were just "sky fairies with jobs."

And Eva laughed. Truly laughed. A lie to please her Maman.

For a few hours, the world bloomed in bright, chaotic color. She even let someone braid her hair. She let go of her violin case.

She forgot — almost.

The sun began to dip. The guests thinned. The string lights flickered to life.

Eva sat in the shadow of the fountain, dusted in chalk and cookie crumbs, and waited.

The hush of twilight came like a sigh.

And that's when she realized —

She hadn't looked for Seraphina's face in over an hour. She hadn't heard her name in her head. She'd been laughing. She'd been… fine.

But now?

Now the laughter had stopped. And with it, came the hollow.

It wasn't sadness. It was absence. The kind that settled deep, like dust behind ribs. A quiet ache, unnamed and uninvited.

She rose slowly, found her case, and walked back to the house without speaking.

The hallway to her room felt longer that night. Her feet were clean, but she still tracked something invisible — regret, maybe. Or longing.

She climbed into bed without brushing her hair, the braid already unraveling. The velvet bow hung loose in her fingers.

The stars on her ceiling flickered in their soft, programmed rotation, but she didn't look at them.

Eva hugged her violin case instead.

It was quiet. Not the kind of quiet that soothes, but the kind that makes your own heartbeat sound too loud.

She buried her face into her pillow.

"It was supposed to be fun," she whispered to the dark. "It was fun. So why does it feel like something's missing?"

No one answered.

But the hollow did.

Seraphina arrived just past nine.

No call. No knock.

Just the creak of the back gate, the pad of careful steps through the garden, and the hush of the sliding door Eva never locked.

Seraphina stepped into the darkened living room, carrying a small box of matcha shortbread cookies and a thermos of rose tea.

Vivienne looked up from the couch and smiled. "She's upstairs. Door's open."

"She seemed…?" Seraphina asked, voice low.

Vivienne nodded. "Quiet. Unsettled. More still than usual."

Seraphina didn't need more than that.

Eva didn't turn when the door creaked. She lay curled beneath her blanket, her violin beside her like a sleeping pet.

"I brought cookies," Seraphina said gently.

No reply.

She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, just close enough to touch but not enough to intrude.

"Yue," Eva murmured, still facing away. "I forgot you for a while today."

Seraphina froze.

"I played with other kids. I laughed. I braided someone's hair. And it was fine. But when it was over… it was like I didn't know where I was anymore."

Eva turned, slowly, eyes rimmed pink.

"I was full, and then suddenly I wasn't. I felt like my chest had a hole the size of your name."

"Oh, little one…"

Eva sat up and flung herself forward, arms winding tightly around Seraphina's waist. "Don't make me play pretend. I don't want you to be just part of my life. I want you to be the melody. The always. The ink."

Seraphina held her fiercely. "Then let me be all that. And let me also be the person who reminds you you're allowed to laugh with other kids. To have joy that isn't mine."

"I don't want joy that isn't yours," Eva mumbled.

"You do. You will. You must. But you'll always come home to me."

Eva pulled back just enough to press her forehead against Seraphina's.

"I felt hollow until you came."

Seraphina stroked her curls. "And now?"

"Now I feel… loud. And soft. And whole again."

They stayed like that a long time.

Eva eventually slid into her lap, her usual place, her sanctuary. Seraphina fed her cookie pieces like communion, wiping her crumbs with the sleeve of her own cardigan.

Eva was quiet, but not the hollow kind. The good kind. The kind that hums with fullness.

"Yue," she said between bites, "if I ever laugh too hard and forget to think about you—promise you'll forgive me."

Seraphina laughed softly. "There's nothing to forgive."

"And if I meet someone who doesn't know your name, and I still like them a little, promise you won't disappear."

"I could never disappear, nightingale. I live inside your songs."

Eva leaned back, dreamy. "And under my bed. And behind the moon. And in every word I don't say because they're too full of you."

Seraphina kissed her forehead. "Exactly."

The next morning, Eva returned to the garden where the party had been. The chalk had faded. The cups were gone.

But one child had left behind a scribbled sun on the brick path.

Eva stood beside it, violin in hand, and added a few notes beside it in chalk. A G-clef. A quarter note. A treble.

A quiet offering to the space between friendship and devotion.

She was learning. Slowly.

That love doesn't shrink when it grows.

That she could belong to more than one place — but she'd always return to the same one.

To Seraphina.

To Ina.

To the only music that ever made her feel real.