When quiet becomes another dweller in her abode, and the moon declares to guard the dusk, it's that time again. That time of longing.

How have you been? Where are you now? Found a partner yet?

Queries involving you cycle in her noggin ad nauseam for, what, two decades now? Pathetic, when you think about it. The Victoria Neuman, rooted in every flat-surfaced media, whose speeches bends the will of millions, wusses from the odds of reaching out.

Sure, public speaking's typically a day's worth of politician labor. Thousands of pairing eyes, weighed with scrutiny or approval, yet incomparable to the force of yours.

Yours can leash her tongue. Make her heart skip a beat. Downsize her to Nadia Khayat again, cowering at the possibility she'll blow up another pair of adoptive parents. See her for who she truly is.

A nagging thought, though, sobered her self-pity: Why don't you actually fucking do something about it, Vic?

And she did. She took her brooding misery elsewhere and, on days off, dug into the bedrock of the internet. Every possible whereabout—dead ends or leads—steered time and effort to a name, an address, a chance.

"Thanks," muttering gratitudes conjures a puny grin trained on the table's treats you laid. A little less rehearsed, excessively stiff. Because, really, sitting on your sofa's living room feels surreal—out of her fucking element.

The nerves are etched everywhere, especially her mind. Those scripted tête-à-tête, "I missed you," and "I loved you" she primed on the drive here? Gone. Each verse, now, is deemed shallow, pointless.

What the hell does she say after her lengthy silence? After Stan whisked her away, and left you lonesome in that hellscape orphanage?

"You still look the same." Still beautiful, she wants to say, still you. Compliments, they're inadequate for the passion bursting in her heart, but it's a start.

Her swarthy eyes, previously unsure of meeting you, now linger on your face's new lines. Stories she missed. "You look better, actually."