The past few hours were an amorphous blur of faded ink. Serina could recall the car ride over here, going through visitor processing and then being guided to the visiting room, but the details were fuzzy. She couldn’t remember arriving at the prison. She couldn’t remember filling out her visitor pass. She couldn’t remember being escorted to the visiting room and couldn’t even remember how she felt during all of it, if she had felt anything at all.
As she sat in the small visiting room, waiting for the staff to return with Risotto, she became aware of the all too familiar numbness that enveloped her like an icy fog, obscuring her surroundings. She didn’t know how long the feeling would last, although she doubted it would be much longer. But she was grateful for it. She didn’t want to cry before she even saw him. And it gave her a chance to think about what she wanted to say to him. At least, that had been the plan.
There was nothing she could say that would make this any more bearable—nothing she could say that would change anything. It was too late for any of that. Things would never go back to the way they had been before. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The sound of footsteps shook her from her melancholy thoughts. The door creaked open behind her. But she didn’t look. She couldn’t look (not yet) so she kept her eyes trained on the empty chair in front of her.
