The awkward embrace on the balcony was not a cure. It didn't fix anything. But it was a beginning.
It was a single step after years of distance to a clumsy signal that something fundamental had shifted between them.
Lucas did not suddenly become affectionate or emotionally fluent. He was still himself, a man with a narrow emotional range and no practice using it. But he was trying, and the effort showed in small, careful changes that began to interrupt the emptiness of their lives.
He stopped bringing work home. The tablet streaming market data disappeared from the dinner table.
He asked about her day, and even when Charlotte's answers were short, he listened fully, his attention fixed on her in a way that demanded more focus than any negotiation ever had.
He was learning how to stay.
Sometimes he reached for her hand. His touch was hesitant, uncertain, as if he feared that too much pressure would cause damage. Charlotte, in return, began to rise slowly from the depths of her depression.
She was still quiet. Still sad. But the emptiness in her eyes occasionally gave way to something else of awareness, curiosity, a cautious interest in this unfamiliar version of her husband.
One morning, Lucas passed the closed door of her old studio. Without thinking too much about it, he opened it.
The room was unchanged and totally clean.
Lifeless. Her self portrait still stood covered in white cloth. He pulled it away and stared at the image of the hollow space in the woman's chest an unignorable record of what he had done.
An idea formed. It wasn't strategic or well thought out. It came from a place he barely recognized.
That afternoon, Lucas walked into an art supply store for the first time in his life. He felt out of place and uncomfortable. He didn't know what to choose, so he selected what looked professional: a large canvas, a solid easel, a full set of oil paints, and a range of brushes.
He had everything delivered, set it up himself in the studio, and placed the blank canvas beside her old painting. The new supplies were untouched. He left the door open.
For days, nothing changed. Charlotte passed the studio, paused, looked inside, then walked away. Her face gave nothing away.
Lucas felt the familiar pull of frustration. He had done something. Why wasn't there a response? He forced himself not to push.
Patience, he was learning, was not passive. It was restraint.
Then one evening, when he came home, he noticed the scent.
Subtle, sharp, familiar it is turpentine.
His heart lifted before he could stop it. He walked quietly toward the studio. The lights were on. He stayed in the doorway, unseen.
Charlotte stood at the easel.
She wasn't working on the new canvas. She was painting the old one.
Not fixing it rathet adding to it.
With a fine brush, she painted a thin crimson line extending from the hollow in the woman's chest, reaching carefully toward the edge of the canvas.
It wasn't healing. Not yet.
But it was movement. Connection. Proof of life.
Lucas stayed where he was, watching in silence, something heavy and unfamiliar pressing against his chest. He had given her tools, nothing more. The rest was hers to choose and she had chosen to begin.
The return of turpentine marked an unspoken truce in their marriage.
Charlotte spent more time in her studio.
Creating didn't erase her pain, but it softened it. Her work remained somber, but it no longer spoke only of despair. Stormy landscapes now held a thin break in the clouds.
Birds were still caged even when the doors were no longer fully shut.
Her paintings traced a slow, difficult return.
Lucas, meanwhile, continued his quiet attempts to reach her. He learned which tea she preferred and made sure it was always available.
When he noticed her lingering over an orchid in a florist's window, he had it delivered to her studio the next day.
They were small gestures. Practical, even transactional. But they were guided by attention, not control.
For the first time, he was investing in her, not managing her.
He even stepped into her world.
One evening, he found her staring at a half-finished painting, frustration tight in her expression.
"The color's wrong," she murmured. "I can't get the right blue."
The old Lucas would have dismissed it. This one stayed. "Show me," he said.
She hesitated, then did.
He watched her mix colors, failure after failure. He knew nothing about art, but patterns were his language. He looked from the palette to the canvas, then to the sky outside, deepening into twilight.
"You need red," he said quietly.
She turned to him, confused.
"There's still warmth on the horizon," he continued. "Just a trace. Without it, the blue stays flat."
She studied the sky. Then the paint. She added the smallest amount of crimson.
The color shifted to deep, heavy, alive.
She looked at him, truly looked at him, and smiled. It wasn't forced. It wasn't cautious.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"I've been paying attention," he replied.
It was the simplest truth, a fact he had never spoken of. That night, she didn't return to her separate room.
She joined him in their bed, leaving space between them, but not distance.
No words.
No touch.
Just presence.
Lucas lay awake for hours, aware of her breathing beside him, aware of how much that quiet closeness meant. Hope stirred fragile reality.
For the first time, he allowed himself to believe that what they had nearly destroyed might still be saved.