I calculated in silence, letting the mathematics of escape scroll behind my eyes. Once I departed, this seat would naturally fall vacant—absorbed into the family's arrangement as though it had never existed at all. By then, they would no longer need to hide their whispers in shadowed corridors, no longer need to orchestrate their careful choreography of deception. This table, with its sterling silver and ancient crystal, had never truly reserved a place for me.
I had stopped playing the role of the one who was pushed along.
The version of Elena who had learned endurance, learned retreat, learned to trade silence for temporary peace—she had already been buried by my own hands, interred in the same cold earth as my illusions. The woman who sat here now believed in only one immutable truth: control had to remain in my own grasp.
Leaving was no longer an escape.
It was a plan.