Page 45 of Julian

“There is something restorative about the first snow,” he continues, folding his hands lightly behind his back. “It suggests a certain… reset.”

“A clean slate,” I say, leaning back slightly in my chair.

“Precisely, sir.”

“New York doesn’t often lend itself to clean slates,” I add.

“No,” Percy agrees, a hint of amusement threading through his voice. “But it does provide the illusion of one, and I’ve found that, more often than not, the illusion is sufficient.”

“You’ve always had a talent for reframing reality.”

“I’ve found it to be a useful skill, sir.”

There’s a comfortable quiet that follows before Percy speaks again.

“The holidays are approaching,” he says. “There have been several inquiries regarding your availability. Invitations, primarily.”

“Let’s put off decisions for now,” I reply, my attention still fixed on the window.

“As you wish.”

There’s no judgment in the response, no curiosity about the decision—Percy has never questioned the boundaries I draw around my time, even when those boundaries have grown narrower over the years.

He inclines his head and turns toward the door. He takes a step, then another, wobblier. Then a third. That’s when it happens.

His step falters—not dramatically, not enough for anyone who doesn’t know him to notice—but I do. I’ve spent decades watching him move through rooms with certainty, each motion deliberate, each step placed with exacting care.

This is different.

There’s the faintest hesitation that shouldn’t be there, and before I can even process it fully, his hand reaches for the nearest chair, gripping the back of it as his weight tips forward.

“Percy—”

The chair scrapes sharply across the floor, its legs protesting against the hardwood, and the sound fractures the calm of the room. It tilts under his grip, knocking into the long wooden console table behind it—just enough force to disturb what had, until now, been perfectly still.

The table jolts.

The framed photographs arranged along its surface tremble, teeter, and then—inevitably—one of them tips past the point of recovery.

It falls and the crack of glass against wood is clean and decisive, echoing far louder than it should in a room designed to absorb sound.

Percy regains his balance, straightening with a kind of practiced composure that suggests he’s already attempting to will the event out of existence, to fold it neatly as if it never happened.

“My apologies, sir,” he says at once, smoothing a hand down the front of his jacket as though he can restore order through the gesture alone. “That was… entirely my fault.”

I’m already out of my chair.

“It’s nothing,” I say, crossing the room quickly, though even as I say it, I know that isn’t quite true. I’ve never seen him do that before. Not once. Not in all the years he’s been in my life.

I crouch near the fallen frame, carefully lifting it from the floor. The glass has fractured in a fine web across the surface, a single crack branching outward into smaller, more delicate lines, but the photograph beneath remains untouched.

I gently set it back on the table before reaching for a cloth to gather the loose shards, my movements slower now, more deliberate.

“You don’t need to—” Percy begins, stepping forward as if to intervene.

“I’ve got it,” I reply.

He stills at that, and when I glance up at him, I catch something I don’t often see.