Prologue


    Ayan didn’t think twice. She rarely did.


    The letter arrived on a Wednesday, neatly folded in a bright white envelope with her name scrawled in a hand she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. She barely made it up the three flights of stairs to her studio before ripping the paper open, standing in the dimly lit entry as the words blurred together. Legal terms, formalities, an apology for her loss.


    Her grandmother’s house was now hers.


    The same house where she spent humid summers chasing fireflies, where the scent of damp earth and honeyed tea clung to her memories. The house with the crooked porch steps and the attic she’d been too afraid to enter alone. The house that, until now, had only existed in the past she was trying to avoid, in the part of her heart where her family still lived.


    She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t check how much was in her bank account. She didn’t make a plan.


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    She quit her job before the day was out, gave her notice on her month-to-month lease she could barely afford, and spent the next two weeks shoving her life into boxes with a frantic desperate energy. There was nothing left for her in New York City - just a series of jobs that didn’t pay enough, a lack of time to ever finish her sculptures, or even start it, a fridge that hummed too loudly in this tiny space that never felt like a home, and the gaping absence of her parents, gone too soon.


    She told herself she was running toward something this time. A new start. A quieter life, an easier one than the hustling of the city. But the truth settled in her chest like a stone.


    She was running away. Running away from overdue bills and sleepless, lonely nights. Running from the way her chest ached when she passed the diner her mother used to take her too when she was feeling down. Running from the fact that no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t stitch her life back together into something whole.


    The house was paid off - mostly. There was a small mortgage, but it was manageable, at least compared to city rent.


    It wasn’t a good plan, but it was a plan.


    And for Ayan, that was enough.