Excerpt IV
He had loved them differently, and that difference had been the beginning of his error.
Rose had asked nothing directly. Her presence was an offering made without instruction — a warmth that assumed its place beside him as though it had always belonged there. With her, affection was quiet, cumulative. It arrived not as desire but as familiarity, as the steady realization that comfort can be its own form of devotion.
Clara, by contrast, had demanded clarity without ever asking for it aloud. There was precision in her attention, a deliberate intensity that unsettled him because it required response. She did not wait for feeling to mature. She believed in the courage of immediacy, in naming what was felt before it could be diluted by doubt.
He had admired both.
And in admiring both, he had failed them equally.
To Rose, his silence became distance. She mistook his restraint for certainty — a sign that what existed between them was so secure it did not require articulation. By the time she understood that his quiet was not confidence but hesitation, the gentleness she offered had already begun to recede, wounded by its own generosity.
With Clara, silence took on a different cruelty. Where she sought acknowledgment, he offered patience. Where she needed decision, he gave consideration. His refusal to choose felt, to her, like a judgment rendered without explanation. She did not withdraw slowly. She left with precision.
Only later did he recognize the symmetry of the loss.
Rose had stayed too long, believing in something he never confirmed.
Clara had left too early, unwilling to remain where nothing was claimed.
Between them lay the sentence he never spoke — one that might have anchored either outcome, but which he withheld in pursuit of an impossible neutrality. He had believed that by choosing neither, he preserved something of both.
He preserved nothing.
What remained was not regret, but responsibility — the understanding that restraint, when misapplied, becomes abdication. That care unexpressed is not protection, but refusal. And that love, unclaimed, does not wait to be reconsidered.
It moves on.
Unevenly.
Decisively.
He carried this knowledge without bitterness. Only with the quiet permanence of something learned too thoroughly to be undone.
Receive Notes from the Studio
New excerpts, essays, and limited releases – sent occasionally.
You're on the list.Notes from the Studio will arrive occasionally.