The smell hit her before she even opened the door.
Adele stepped inside and stopped. She looked toward the kitchen. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the pot on the stove with the quiet confidence of something that had already given up.
"What do you think about the food?" Emilia appeared from the back room, grinning in that particular way she had — wide and nervous and already bracing for impact.
Adele looked at her. Then back at the pot. Then back at her.
"Not good, Emilia."
"You haven't even tasted it—"
"I don't need to." Adele walked toward the kitchen, peering into the pot with the expression of someone inspecting a crime scene. "Who cooked this?"
"My mum," Emilia said, crossing her arms.
Adele turned and looked at her flatly.
Emilia held for exactly three seconds before cracking. "Alright, alright — it was me. Geez. Is it really that bad?"
"Bad is generous." Adele picked up a spoon, held it out toward Emilia. "Taste it yourself."
Emilia giggled and backed away. "I believe you, I believe you."
"Throw it out. I'll make something else."
Emilia sank into the chair by the window while Adele cleaned out the pot and started again, moving through the small kitchen with the ease of someone who had cooked in worse conditions than this. For a while neither of them spoke. Just the sound of water running and the soft knock of utensils and outside the distant noise of the street going about its evening.
It felt, for a moment, almost normal.
"So what have you been doing lately?" Emilia asked, propping her chin on her hand.
"Nothing much. School. Coming home." Adele kept her eyes on the stove. "How's my brother?"
Emilia's expression softened. "He's recovering. Mummy's taking him to the country."
Adele stilled for just a second. "They're letting her go?"
"No," Emilia said quietly. "But her brother's coming. He'll take them."
"Are you going too?"
"Yeah." A small pause. "There aren't many rules there."
Adele nodded slowly, stirring without really seeing what she was stirring.
"I wish you could come, Adele."
"Me too." The words came out quieter than she intended. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, blinking. "I'm tired of this place. It holds too many bad memories." She lowered her gaze back to the pot. "But we're not permitted to leave. You know that."
The chair scraped softly. Then Emilia's arms came around her from behind — sudden and warm and a little clumsy the way Emilia always was with hugs, like she never quite knew where to put herself but did it anyway.
"I'm sorry, Adele," she whispered. "That day — I could've said something. I wanted to. But I couldn't—"
"Hey." Adele set down the spoon and turned, holding her properly. "Stop that. If you had said anything you'd have been punished. You know that." She pulled back enough to look at her face. "It's not your fault. None of it."
Emilia sniffed. Nodded. Wiped her face with the back of her hand and laughed a little at herself.
They finished cooking together after that — Emilia handing things over when asked, getting in the way more than she helped, filling the kitchen with noise and warmth until the food was done and the earlier heaviness had lifted just enough to breathe.
They ate at the small table by the window as the light outside turned gold and thin.
"Oh—" Emilia sat up suddenly, as if she'd nearly forgotten. "Before I forget." She reached into her bag and pulled out a small comm device, setting it on the table between them.
Adele looked at it. "What's this?"
"Mummy said to give it to you. In case anything happens. In case you need help and can't reach anyone."
Adele picked it up carefully. It was small and plain, nothing remarkable about it — but the weight of it in her hand felt significant somehow. Like a hand reaching back toward her across a distance that was about to get much wider.
"Thank you," she said softly.
"It's the least we can do." Emilia reached across and squeezed her hand once. "We'll be leaving tomorrow."
Adele looked up. "So soon?"
"The sooner the better, Mummy says." She hesitated. "Do you want to come see your brother before we go? Say goodbye?"
Adele was quiet for a moment. She turned the comm device over in her hands once, twice.
"No," she said finally. "It'll be harder if I see him." She set the device down and pushed back from the table. "But wait here."
She went to the drawer near the dining table and opened it. Inside, beneath a few folded papers, was a small letter she had written days ago — wrapped carefully in a strip of brown leather, tied with a thin cord, small enough to fit in a child's hand.
She brought it back and placed it in Emilia's palm.
"Give him this," she said. "And tell him—" her voice caught, just slightly, "—tell him his sister loves him. No matter what happens. No matter how long it takes." She pressed Emilia's fingers closed around it. "I'll come back for him."
Emilia's eyes were wet. She nodded, not trusting her voice.
"Thank you," Adele said. "For everything. You and your mother. I don't know what I would have done without you both."
"Hold on a little longer," Emilia whispered, placing her free hand on Adele's shoulder. "Just a little longer."
Adele looked at her — this girl who had stayed when everyone else had found reasons to leave — and felt something move through her that wasn't quite grief and wasn't quite gratitude. Something that didn't have a clean name.
"I will," she said quietly.
Outside the window the last of the light was going. Tomorrow Emilia would be gone. Her brother would be somewhere safer and further away. And Adele would still be here, in a town full of bad memories, with a board on Mara's table and a name at the center of it.
She picked up the comm device from the table and held it in her closed fist.
Hold on a little longer.
She intended to do much more than that.