I sit alone for a moment before we move.
Not because I need silence. I have lived with noise in my head for most of my life. Voices. Calculations. Old arguments that never fully ended. But because I need to choose what stays with me when I walk into that building. Fear will come whether I invite it or not. Rage too. The difference is what I let drive.
I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose, slow and controlled, then out again. I count it. Four in. Six out. I do it again until my pulse stops trying to climb out of my throat.
I picture the old Thornton hotel the way it was when I was younger. Marble floors dulled by time and careless shoes. Chandeliers that never quite stopped swaying even when the air was still, as if the building itself remembered movement long after it ended. C
