“I honestly still laugh about it sometimes,” Madison whispered, her voice laced with that same toxic, practiced sweetness from fifteen years ago

The breakroom was empty. Lily sat for a moment, the silence of the room pressing against her ears like a heavy weight

Nora pushed the folders aside, the weight of the ink and paper pressing down on her like a physical force. She had spent twenty-eight years believing that her life was a series of personal choices, only to realize it was a pre-written script with a predictable, catastrophic final act.

Grant Whitmore did not wait for an answer. He moved with a restless, impatient energy, his gaze flicking over the applicants like they were line items in a budget he had already decided to cut. When his eyes landed on Rachel, he paused

I walked out into the cool Vermont night, the smell of damp grass and pine replacing the sickly-sweet scent of lilies and bleach. I didn’t cry. Crying would have been a waste of the life I had built for myself in Boston, a life where nobody decided who I was or where I belonged.