Clara turned the moment she sensed me in the doorway, her hands slipping from my mother's shoulders with practiced ease.
She looked almost exactly the same. Maybe a little older, a little sharper around the eyes—but still unmistakably Clara Langford.
For a second, she just looked at me—like she was making sure I was real.
Her smile bloomed like it had been waiting all day for this exact moment. "Adrien."
I nodded once, offering a small smile of my own. "Clara."
Clara's expression softened into something… familiar. "You haven't changed," she said, stepping closer.
"I have."
Clara's smile dropped for just a second, a flicker of something unreadable—sadness? disappointment? recognition?—before it settled back into that bright, expectant expression. "Well, of course," she conceded, her voice soft, like the sound of the wind. "We all do. But the essence… you still have that quiet intensity, Adrien. The one that always made you seem older than you were."
