Andromeda | Summer Starlight Collab

The waiting room smelled like lavender and old money—scented diffuser masking the faint mustiness of the Persian rug, the oil portraits of Dr. Moreau's ancestors watching from the walls with that particular French aristocratic disinterest. Andromeda checked her phone. 4:47. Thirteen minutes since she'd left the office, and she could still feel the phantom weight of the conversation pressing against her sternum.

Your mother called again.

She hadn't answered. Of course she hadn't. But the voicemail sat in her inbox like an unexploded grenade, and Dr. Moreau had noticed her picking at the cuticle of her thumb halfway through the session—the only tell Andromeda hadn't managed to suppress.

You're still protecting her.

The accusation hadn't been spoken, but it hung there anyway.

She stepped out onto Rue de Rivoli, the October air sharp enough to bite through her wool coat. Paris moved around her in its usual rhythm: tourists clutching maps, businessmen with cigarettes dangling from their lips, a busker playing Edith Piaf off-key near the metro entrance.

Andromeda walked.

She didn't have a destination—just movement, the need to outpace the crawling sensation beneath her skin. Her heels clicked against the pavement, steady as a metronome, and she let the city swallow her.

A text buzzed.

DAD: Happy early birthday. Check is in the mail.

Three thousand miles and twelve days early, because remembering the actual date might require something resembling effort.

She typed back a single thumbs-up emoji, then immediately hated herself for it. Predictable. Compliant. Everything she swore she wasn't. The Seine appeared on her left, gunmetal gray under the overcast sky. Andromeda stopped at the railing, watching a bateau-mouche cut through the water, its passengers huddled against the chill.

You're still protecting her.

"I'm not," she said aloud, to no one. A passing woman glanced at her, then quickly away.

Andromeda's jaw tightened. She pulled out her cigarettes—Gauloises, because apparently she'd gone fully native—and lit one with hands that didn't quite steady. The smoke curled upward, dissolving into the gray. Her phone buzzed again. Unknown number. French area code. She stared at it, thumb hovering over decline. She let it ring out.

The screen went dark, then lit again with a voicemail notification. Andromeda took a long drag and watched a pigeon peck at something near the embankment steps. Her thumb moved before her brain caught up. She pressed play.

"Bonjour, Mademoiselle Vance. This is the galerie on Rue des Beaux-Arts—you left your scarf yesterday. The blue one. We're closing at six if you'd like to collect it. Merci."

Not her mother. Not Cassiopeia's voice sliding through the speaker, honeyed and manipulative, asking for forgiveness wrapped in the guise of concern. Andromeda exhaled smoke she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

The scarf. Yves Klein blue, cashmere, a gift she'd bought herself after her first paper was published in the department journal. She'd forgotten it Wednesday, probably draped over that awful Louis Philippe chair in the back room while she'd been arguing with the curator about the provenance of that supposed Fragonard.

She checked the time. 5:02. She could make it if she walked fast.

The cigarette met the Seine in a quick arc, hissing against the water. Andromeda turned away from the railing and cut through the crowd, her pace quickening as she dodged a man with a baguette and a woman wrangling a toddler.

Rue des Beaux-Arts materialized twenty minutes later, narrow and quieter than the main thoroughfares. The galerie's green awning came into view, and through the window she could see the owner—a silver-haired woman named Colette—wiping down the front desk.

Andromeda pushed through the door. The bell chimed overhead.

"Ah, Mademoiselle Vance." Colette didn't look up from her task. "It's in the back. On the couch where you left it, naturally."

"Naturally."

She moved through the space, past the abstract nudes and the overpriced ceramics, toward the small sitting area where clients waited during private viewings. The scarf was there, pooled on the burgundy velvet like a spill of paint.

And so was someone else.