Branch: Splintered Edges (Chloe, Sam, Dawn)

The kitchen was small, even by city standards. Two steps and you’d be at the stove, four and you’d hit the window, five to the fridge. Every surface was stacked: textbooks with sticky tabs growing from the edges like fungus, a box of jasmine tea bags, two half-empty cereal bowls with spoons floating in the milk. The lights were harsh and yellow; they gave everything a hollow, day-old look.

When Chloe found her, Norah was standing with her back to the window, a phone pressed flat to her cheek. She wasn’t crying, but her posture—shoulders squeezed, chin up—had the brittle set of someone fighting not to break. Her other hand clutched the counter’s edge, knuckles bone-white against Formica.

"—I know, Mama. Yes, I am eating. Of course. I’m not a child."

Her mother’s voice was audible even from here, a thread of anxious Arabic-accented English. Norah’s side of the conversation was all careful patience, a tightrope act between assurance and irritation.

"No, I haven't seen him. He’s probably just busy. Yes, I’ll call him tomorrow." A beat, a flicker of tension around her lips. "Mama, I’m fine. I promise. Yes."

Chloe recognized the script. Every sentence a sandbag in the levee, holding back the collapse. She’d heard it in her own mother’s voice, too, when things were bad: an insistence so desperate it couldn’t possibly be true.

"The internship?" Norah's voice suddenly tightened. "It's...it's good. Very professional. Everyone's been—" She swallowed hard. "Yes, LanternLight is exactly what I hoped. The team is brilliant." Her fingers drummed against the counter, a silent telegraph of anxiety. "No, I haven't presented to the whole department yet. Soon, though. They're giving me time to..." She trailed off, listening. "Of course they value me. Mr. Cooper himself said my ideas were... interesting."

The conversation went on for minutes. Norah cycled through the same handful of phrases, sometimes in English, sometimes in a soft, tight Arabic. She never raised her voice, but at times her grip on the counter made the whole phone vibrate. Chloe found herself staring at the outline of Norah's shoulder blades, how sharp they were through her sweater, the threadbare fabric gone thin at the points where bone and skin met.

Eventually, the pitch of the call changed; Norah’s mother passed the phone to someone else. The next voice was low, gruff, and even though Chloe couldn’t make out the words, she felt the impact hit like a slap.

"Yes, Baba," Norah said, voice a shade smaller. "No, I understand. Of course. I will. Yes, I know you did." Her jaw clenched and unclenched. "Okay. Thank you. I love you too."

A long silence stretched out, then: "Goodnight."

Norah hung up, but didn’t move. For a moment she stood frozen, chin bowed over the battered plastic phone, staring at it as if it might ring again with better news.

Chloe watched from the doorway. She could see the exhaustion in the way Norah’s hands shook, the thin shimmer in her eyes that wasn’t quite tears. She didn’t look defeated—just impossibly tired. She looked like someone who’d fought so long that letting go, even for a second, felt like betrayal.

The spell broke when Norah finally exhaled. It was not a sigh but something more deliberate—a crumpling, like a sheet of paper being folded down to half its size. Her arms hugged her own ribcage. She slid to the floor, knees pulled up under her, back against the dishwasher.

Chloe crossed the kitchen and sat on the linoleum beside her, careful to leave a hand’s width of space. The floor was cold, especially through her wrap, and she felt the chill climb through her hip to her heart.

Neither of them spoke at first. The clock over the stove blinked 1:47, then 1:48, every minute another stone in the well.

Chloe waited until Norah was ready, or as ready as anyone could be.

"You don’t have to explain," Chloe said, voice soft. "I know how it feels to pretend it’s all working."

Norah let out a dry, broken laugh. "Do you?"

Chloe nodded. "Every week, at least once. Usually on a Sunday. My mom used to call it the Weekly Inquisition. How’s school? How’s work? Are you eating? Are you—" She stopped herself, a flush creeping into her cheeks. "Sorry. It’s not the same. I shouldn’t—"

But Norah shook her head, a silent thank you. Her hands trembled where they pressed into her thighs.

"I was supposed to impress them," Norah said. "The internship was… everything. You know? After all the bullshit in college, after all the times I thought maybe I wasn’t good enough—this was the proof. That I could be more than…" She trailed off. "It doesn’t matter."

"It matters," Chloe said.

Norah pulled her knees tighter. "You know what I did today? I choked. I got up in front of the team—the people I’m supposed to learn from—and I just… shut down. Andy Cooper asked one question, just one, and my brain broke."

Chloe watched Norah shrink in on herself, arms wrapped tight, as if she were the only thing holding her insides in place. The kitchen was still, save for the refrigerator’s wheeze and a distant siren that rose, crested, then vanished into the city night.

Norah dug her nails into her knees. “I thought I’d prepared for everything. But all he had to do was… see through me.” She shut her eyes. “My supervisor, Nita? She was right there. She knew it, too. I could see it in her face—‘Oh, she’s just a quota.’ That’s what they’ll all think now.”

Chloe let the silence hover, then gently set her own back against the dishwasher. The vinyl floor was already numbing her, but she wanted to be on Norah’s level. “Maybe it isn’t what you think,” Chloe said, voice low. “You did your best. That’s all any of us can do. Sometimes… it’s not enough, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever be.”

Norah shook her head, a sharp, tired motion. “I can’t go back in tomorrow. Not after that. The last thing my parents need is a failure.” She made a sour, twisted smile. “You ever notice how people talk about being proud of their family, but really it’s just, ‘Please, don’t make me the one they regret?’”

“I notice,” Chloe said, and for a moment the weight of her own life—her disappointments, her mother’s silent hopes—settled in her lap like a tired cat. “I used to think being ‘good’ meant making other people’s lives easier. That if I just tried hard enough, everyone else would hurt a little less.”

She thought about her own mother’s voice, the gentle, relentless way it asked after her day, her students, whether she’d eaten. How it skirted around the real questions, the ones no one wanted to answer. Sometimes the only thing that kept Chloe moving was the fear of what would happen if she didn’t.

Norah’s hands unclenched, just slightly. She glanced at Chloe, suspicious and grateful all at once. “How did you make it work?”

“I didn’t,” Chloe said, smiling. “Not really. I just got used to the feeling.”

Norah considered this. Her lashes were wet, but she blinked hard and said, “Do you ever wish you’d picked something else? Something that didn’t… matter so much?”

Chloe shrugged. “Sometimes. But then I remember why I wanted to do it in the first place. You don’t have to be perfect to help someone. You just have to care.”

That seemed to reach Norah. Her shoulders loosened, a fraction. “I guess,” she said. “But what if it’s not enough?”

Chloe thought of all the children she’d tried to save, the ones who still ended up lost or hurting. Of the notes she’d kept from parents, the crude crayon drawings, the bittersweet thank-yous. She knew better than anyone that sometimes it wasn’t enough. But she also knew it could be, just once, and that was reason to try.

“Sometimes it is,” Chloe said. “Sometimes it just takes longer than you think.”

They sat like that, in companionable defeat, for a long while. Norah leaned her head against the cabinet door and closed her eyes. Chloe watched her breathe, in and out, each time steadier than the last.

Finally, Norah said, “Why are you here?”

Chloe smiled. “Because I know what it’s like to have a day that feels like the end of everything.”

Norah made a noise—half laugh, half sob. “That obvious, huh?”

Chloe nodded. “You’re braver than you think. And tomorrow, you’ll go back in. Even if you’re scared. Even if it hurts.”

Norah looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “You sound like you believe that.”

“I do,” Chloe said, and for the first time in years, she realized it was true. “And you should, too.”

They were silent again, but the silence was softer now. Norah wasn’t fixed—no one ever was—but she was a little less alone in the world, and Chloe knew that sometimes, that was enough to get you through the night.

The memory began to blur at the edges, the sharp outlines of countertop and cupboard softening, fading to gray. But Chloe reached out—just once—and touched Norah’s hand. Norah didn’t pull away. If anything, she gripped back, as if anchoring herself to something real.

---

The kitchen dissolved like breath on glass, the linoleum floor melting into shadow beneath Chloe's palms. For a moment she held on—to Norah's hand, to the cold floor, to the weight of connection—but her fingers found only fog, only the memory of touch. The cupboards stretched and thinned into pillars of light, and the harsh yellow kitchen gave way to something darker, softer, less forgiving.She surfaced in the Garden of Glass with her hand still extended, as if offering something no one could take. The mirrors hummed their three-note chord around her, and she realized she was trembling—not from fear, but from the terrible ache of having witnessed someone's breaking and only being able to sit beside it.

The condensation on the pillars caught her eye: tiny, perfect beads like tears that wouldn't fall. A whisper drifted past—"You're braver than you think"—and Chloe's throat tightened, because she'd just said those words, and now they echoed back to her as if the garden itself was questioning whether she believed them. The darkness felt less suffocating here than before, the blue refracted light moving somewhere distant like a beacon or a ghost. Another whisper, softer: "When we’re grown up, we’ll get married for real," and a third voice underneath it all: "I promise." Ahead, one of the larger mirror fragments flashed with a clear, high note, and Chloe—steadied by the knowledge that she had done something good, even if it wasn't enough—moved toward it, her hand reaching out once more.

---

The afternoon light in the Holt kitchen was the color of cold tea. It filtered through two layers of lace curtains, turning everything—dented fridge, flowered wallpaper, the fridge magnets spelling out S-A-R-A-H in wonky lines—soft and gray. Sam took it all in at a glance. She stood by the door, careful not to touch anything, already feeling out of place.

Marissa sat at the kitchen table, alone but for a battered laptop and a stack of annotated textbooks. She was smaller here—twenty-three, twenty-four at most, her hair still that buttery shade of blonde that would later turn gold with sun and age. She wore a massive cardigan over a button-down shirt that swallowed her wrists, and she hunched over the table like she was bracing against a storm.

Across from her, behind the laptop screen, sat a man in a gray suit and wire-frame glasses. Sam wondered who this man was, who could make Marissa look this skittish. He was the type who talked in low, unbroken sentences, always making it clear he thought you were a promising inconvenience.

“Your proposal is impressive, Marissa,” he said, fingers steepled. “The review panel is especially interested in your trauma cohort results. You may have a publication here—if you can expand the scope.”

Marissa’s mouth pressed into a careful line. “Thank you, sir. I’ll broaden the sample size and resubmit.”

“Mmm.” Hensworth peered over his glasses. “But I need to be candid. There’s been some—concern—about your, ah, professional presentation. You’re a standout in every way. But academia is still… visual, yes?” His eyes flickered down, not once but three times, to the buttons of her shirt. “We want you to be taken seriously. Sometimes that means—adjustments.”

Marissa’s hands went white on the table. “Of course, Dr. Hensworth. I understand.”

“Good. You’re a leader, Marissa. Don’t give them a reason to doubt you.” He closed the laptop, standing up. “I look forward to the revision.”

The moment he left, Marissa’s body deflated. She stared at the closed laptop as if it had personally betrayed her. For a minute she just sat there, fingers trembling over the keyboard, then she packed everything up in jerky, silent motions. Sam saw the moment her defenses cracked: Marissa pressed her fists against her eyes, breathing through her teeth, shoulders shaking.

Sam wanted to go to her, to say something—anything—but she remembered too well the feeling of hands that could only clench, not comfort. She held herself still, half inside the memory, half outside, unsure where she belonged.

Marissa stood abruptly and left the kitchen, her footsteps muffled by old carpet. Sam followed, heart in her throat. Up the narrow stairs, into a bedroom that looked like a hotel room for lost girls: a single bed, bare desk, faded posters from ancient piano competitions. A small mirror hung crooked above a low dresser.

Marissa stared into the mirror, unbuttoning the shirt with slow, punishing care. She peeled it off her shoulders, then the cardigan, then her undershirt. In the reflection, her breasts were the only bright color in a world gone pale. She stared at them, at herself, as if trying to see what Hensworth saw.

She gripped one breast, then the other, pinching the skin so hard it blanched. Her lips moved, but the only words that came out were, “Why can’t you just be normal?” The question hovered in the air, brittle and sour.

Sam felt the punch of it in her own chest. She saw her younger self in every motion—every time she tried to shrink or hide, every time her father’s gaze slid right through her, seeing only what he wanted to see.

Marissa’s hands fumbled in a drawer, coming up with a roll of athletic tape. Without a word, she started binding her chest, winding it flat. The tape made small tearing noises, and soon Marissa’s breathing went shallow, as if she was struggling to draw enough air. She finished, then shrugged the shirt back on, stared at her reflection. She looked nothing like herself, but she didn’t look like Hensworth’s version, either.

Marissa’s hands trembled where she clutched the edge of the dresser. The mirror caught her from the neck down: not quite as flat as a boy, skin gone raw and crosshatched from the tape, the ghost of her own body barely visible under the borrowed shirt. Sam wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. It was like watching a disaster unfold in real time—a slow-motion collapse with no survivors, only debris.

Marissa’s chest heaved, tight and shallow. She touched her own breastbone, pressed hard enough that her fingers whitened, as if she could will it away. “Not enough,” she muttered. “Never enough.” The words were meant for no one, but they hit Sam like a direct accusation.

Sam had seen enough trauma to know when someone was bleeding out. She wanted to say, “It’s okay, you’re not the problem,” but the words caught in her throat. It was as if the whole house was made of insulation—everything muffled, every comfort suffocated before it could escape. She remembered, with sudden clarity, her own father’s voice—how it could silence a room with a single word, how it never once called her by the name she chose.

It occurred to Sam that maybe Marissa’s pain was the same—muted on the outside, screaming underneath.

The air in the bedroom felt suddenly thin, electric with grief. Marissa’s knees buckled, and she sat down hard on the floor, arms wrapped around her stomach. Her hair curtained her face. She rocked, just a little, back and forth, the way you might comfort a child after a nightmare.

Sam tried to step closer, but her own legs wouldn’t obey. She was anchored to the carpet, the sense of futility as thick as concrete. She wanted to help, to witness, to be what Marissa needed—but she knew she wasn’t. Not here. Not now.

She pressed her own palms together, as if in prayer, but the gesture felt hollow. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but the sound vanished before it crossed the room.

Marissa’s hands came up to her face. She dug her nails into her temples and squeezed, as if she could pop the whole head off and start again with a better one. “Why do I even try?” she said, not to Sam, not to anyone. “They don’t want me to be better. They want me to disappear.”

Sam felt something unravel inside her, a tightness she hadn't realized was there until it gave way like a dam breaking. Her lungs seized. The words were too close, too familiar, scraping against old wounds she'd thought had scarred over. Her throat burned with the memory of swallowing back tears in bathroom stalls, of smiling through clenched teeth when her father introduced her as "my daughter, going through a phase." The phantom weight of a dress she'd worn to prom with a boy whose name she couldn't even remember now pressed against her skin.

She remembered the guidance counselor who'd slid college brochures across her desk—all women's colleges quietly removed from the stack. The boss who'd asked her to "tone down the whole lesbian thing" during coffee hours. The date who'd laughed and said, "You're too pretty to be gay." The parade of corrections had worn grooves into her soul, paths so familiar she still walked them in her sleep.

Her chest tightened until each breath felt like inhaling glass. She watched Marissa's fingers dig into her own flesh and saw herself at nineteen, standing before a mirror, wondering if she could scrub away everything that made people look at her sideways.

For all her pride, for all her "I am who I am" bravado, before The HH, she had been just as desperate for approval as Marissa. Maybe everyone was. Maybe everyone carried this howling void inside them, this hunger to be seen without being corrected.

The two of them sat in silence, separated by a gulf of shame and longing that felt wider than oceans. The light from the hallway spilled in, striping the carpet in sickly gold. The walls pressed inward. The air grew heavier by the second, thick with unspoken grief.

After a time, Marissa lay down flat on the floor, arms at her sides, face turned to the wall. She looked like she was bracing for an earthquake, or maybe just waiting for it to be over. Sam tried, one more time, to reach out. She imagined herself kneeling at Marissa's side, placing a hand on her shoulder, saying something brave. But when she tried to move, her own arms turned to water. She could only watch, helpless and ashamed, as the moment slipped away.

The house was so quiet, Sam could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. It sounded like footsteps echoing down an empty hall, like the retreating backs of everyone who'd ever told her she wasn't enough.

The scene began to fade at the edges, the colors leaching out, the walls dissolving into blankness. Sam tried to hold on, but the gravity of her own sorrow was too strong, pulling her down into a well of memories she couldn't climb out of. She slid down to the floor, drawing her knees to her chest, breathing in short, uneven bursts. Her tears felt like acid. "I'm sorry," she managed to whisper, though whether to Marissa or herself, she couldn't say.

And then the dream—or the memory, or whatever this was—let her go. And the world went white.

---

Dawn never felt the transfer, not in the way she expected. One blink, and she was at the edge of an asphalt playground, cold seeping up through her soles. It was late afternoon, that weird nowhere hour when the sun hovers too long above the treetops and the shadows stretch until they break. The whole place stank of mulch and old pennies, the stink of schoolyard winter.

She saw the bench first—a battered plank, hunched and listing beneath the spiny, black-green boughs of a yew hedge. The wood was so scarred it looked like it had fought off a generation of angry children and lost; every inch was notched or sanded to splinters, the metal bolts at either end flecked with rust and chewing gum. In the middle, a girl sat near one end, knees drawn up, legs too long for her frame but not long enough to touch the ground. Her sneakers were from the dollar store, their rubber toes still too clean despite being half a size too small. The soles didn’t quite reach the asphalt, so the girl’s feet swung in a slow, gravitational arc, never quite daring to settle.

Her parka was navy blue, but the color was softened by age and thrift. It had that overly puffy look that comes from being washed too often, the kind that absorbs the smell of every cafeteria lunch and rainy-day gym class. It hung from her shoulders like a parachute, sleeves bunched at the cuffs. Dawn couldn’t see the girl’s face, just the crown of her hair, parted straight and severe, and the white of her scalp showing like an accusation. The backpack in her lap was covered with stick-on stars, most of them just faded adhesive shadows, outlines of bright things that had peeled away. The only sticker still clinging was a unicorn, its face worn to a ghost by the friction of fingers and time.

Dawn didn’t need to look twice to know: it was Chloe.

Maybe not the Chloe she knew—the woman who laughed at bad puns and nervously licked her lips before a kiss, who coiled and uncoiled like a snail when startled. But this was her, small and hunched and shivering, locked in the stasis of a memory that didn’t belong to Dawn but somehow felt like her own.

She felt the waiting even before she understood it. The kind that turns your blood thin and slight, that makes each sound sharper and louder than it should be. Every clatter of a car door, every parent’s laugh echoing from a minivan, every click of a crossing guard’s whistle: they were all promises that came for someone else. Dawn recognized the pattern on sight—the desperate calculus of a child left behind, subtracting hope with every tick of the clock. Maybe today would be the day someone forgot you for good.

The rest of the playground was emptying, not all at once but in fragments. A pair of twins in pilled bubble coats jostled each other off the monkey bars, their mother calling to them as she checked her phone, barely looking up. A boy with wild hair and a hockey stick traced a line through a melting patch of snow, then slung his battered duffel over one shoulder and sprinted toward the curb, where an uncle or older brother in a beater van waited, engine idling. Two girls in plaid skorts and tights sat on the bottom rung of a jungle gym, whispering in the language of best friends, until one’s father showed up in a cloud of aftershave and brisk apology.

Each departure left a hole in the scene, a silence that resettled itself around the girl on the bench. The playground was a vacuum, and Chloe’s shadow grew with every minute she stayed. The sun was lower now, redder, slicing through the swing set at a steep angle and painting a cage of shadows on the cracked blacktop.

Dawn hovered at the edge, unsure if she was supposed to intervene or simply watch. The whole tableau had the feel of a stage set, like a play she’d seen a hundred times in different variations, each ending with the same punch line. She remembered her own childhood, the aftercare room in the ramshackle school that always smelled of old plastic and tears, the way the office secretary would say “not yet, sweetie,” without even turning away from her computer screen. The snack was always the same: a carton of shelf-stable milk, a handful of oyster crackers, and a sullen silence that stretched until darkness scraped the windows.

But this wasn’t just a sadness—it was a ritual. Dawn saw the way the girl’s feet marked time, how her knobby knees wobbled as she counted down the seconds to disappointment. She watched the hands—raw, bitten nails, little half-moons of dried blood at the cuticles—clutch the straps of the backpack, squeezing until her knuckles turned yellow. This was a child who knew neglect as a constant, who feared hope more than loneliness.

A crow landed on the edge of a trash can, cocked its head, then let out a sound that was half cackle, half complaint. It was the only witness to the scene beside Dawn. She wanted to tell it to shut up, to let the moment have its silence, but the crow kept blaring, as if to say: Look, look, someone is always watching and no one is coming.

She remembered a story Chloe had told once, late at night, after the worst day at work. They’d been lying in bed, lights off, only the orange glow of a streetlamp leaking through the window. Chloe said she never minded being alone, not really, except in those moments when she realized she didn’t know what to do with herself when no one was expecting her. She’d go to a park, or the library, or the grocery store, just to be somewhere she could observe other people doing normal things. It made her feel less invisible to see that life went on, even if it didn’t have room for her.

And now here she was, in her own memory, doing the same thing: hiding in plain sight, hoping no one would notice how much she needed to be seen.

The sun kept slipping, the sky gone from gold to a shade of blue that only appeared in the hour before headlights mattered. Dawn felt the cold creep through her shoes, up her calves, settling in her ankles like wet sand. She wondered if she could catch the girl’s eye, but the girl never looked up. It was as if she’d been told at some point that expecting kindness was dangerous, and she’d believed it so completely that she couldn’t even imagine rescue.

A door banged somewhere behind the school. A custodian in a brown work shirt and mismatched gloves pulled a trash bin out to the curb, then locked the side gate with a squeal that echoed across the empty lot. Each new noise was another marker on the timeline, another minute clicked off the clock of abandonment.

Dawn tried to remember her own worst pickup. Was it the year her mom started the new pharmacy job and sometimes forgot what day it was? Was it the time she waited until the sky was pitch-black and the only car left in the lot was the cop cruiser, so the officer had to call her house and her dad showed up in a rage, reeking of gin and shame? Maybe it was all of them, wound together into one slow bleed of trust.

She wanted to comfort the girl, to sit beside her and say that it wasn’t her fault, that sometimes grownups loved you but failed you anyway. She wanted to offer the kind of gentle, well-practiced empathy that only children could truly believe, the words that would dissolve the thick knot of dread and let the girl unclench, just for a second.

But Dawn knew it was a lie, or at least a wishful half-truth. Sometimes no one came—not in time, not ever. Sometimes you waited until the windows of the building went black and the only company you had were the moths butting the glass.

Instead, she walked over and sat at the other end of the bench, careful to keep her distance—a respectful three feet of splintered wood and lingering caution. It was the kind of move that said, I see you, but I won’t rush you. She folded her hands in her lap and let her gaze drift to the horizon, waiting for the invitation that might never come.

The wind shifted, a gust scraping dried leaves across the blacktop and rattling the chain-link along the field. The girl sniffled, a sound so soft it might have been the wind itself, but Dawn heard it. She matched her breath to the slow pump of the girl’s legs, syncing their rhythms without trying to lead.

For a long time nothing happened. The crow took off, replaced by silence. The last car in the lot, a brittle sedan with a duct-taped bumper, started up and drove away, leaving only exhaust and disappointment. The world shrank to the bench and the hedge and the two of them, suspended in the kind of pause that felt both endless and desperately short.

Dawn felt the urge to speak, but the words wouldn’t line up. She remembered her therapist telling her once about the power of “companioning”—just being there, letting the silence do the work when language failed. The trick, the therapist said, was resisting the urge to fix. Sometimes showing up was enough.

She glanced at the girl, then back at her shoes. In the failing light, the stickered backpack looked like a message in a bottle that had barely survived the ocean. Dawn wondered if Chloe had carried it every day, or if this was the memory’s version of the truth—a symbol, not an artifact.

Finally, after what could have been five minutes or thirty, the girl stilled her feet. She looked at Dawn out of the corner of her eye, pupils dilated in the dusk, and asked, “Are you lost, too?”

Dawn shook her head. “No. Just waiting.”

The girl thought about this. Then she nodded, not looking up. “They forgot,” she said. Not even sad, just a fact.

Dawn’s chest tightened. She remembered the way her own mother had looked through her, sometimes, even when she stood right there.

“Do you want me to stay?” Dawn asked.

The girl shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Someone always leaves.”

Dawn sat with that. It was so raw it made her angry. She wanted to rage at the world on the kid’s behalf, but the kid didn’t need rage. She needed something to hold her over, even if just for another half-hour.

Dawn scooted closer, slow, not wanting to spook her. She reached out, brushed a leaf from the girl’s shoe. “I’ll wait with you. If that’s okay.”

The girl blinked. “You don’t have to.”

“I know,” Dawn said. “But I will, anyway.”

They sat, the wind gnawing at their ears. A crow flapped down, pecked at a candy wrapper, then took off again.

The girl glanced at Dawn, then back at her lap. “You don’t have a phone?”

“Nope,” Dawn said. “Just time.”

The girl’s mouth twitched, then relaxed. The two of them sat, silent, as the sky went from copper to purple.

After a while, the headlights of an old sedan swept across the lot. The girl stood, hoisting her backpack. She didn’t say thank you, but as she left, she touched Dawn’s hand, a fleeting squeeze of fingers.

Dawn sat on the bench after she was gone, staring at the empty playground. She felt the ache in her chest, but it was quieter now.

---

The playground dissolved. One moment Dawn was watching the taillights fade into the dark; the next, the bench beneath her was unmade—not crumbling, but releasing, as if the memory was gently unclenching its grip. The asphalt softened into suggestion, the hedge became smoke, and the crow's final call stretched into a sound that wasn't quite a sound anymore. The child's touch on her hand—that real, warm pressure—was the last thing to fade, lingering like an echo in her palm even as the world became void.

She surfaced in the Garden of Glass gasping, as if waking from drowning, her hands still shaped around the phantom contact. The darkness here didn't feel hostile now, just patient—it had deepened into something more textured, less suffocating. The mirrors hummed their gentle song, and she realized she was listening to it rather than flinching from it. There was something almost like comfort in the rhythm, something that matched the way her heart was still learning to quiet down.

The mirror fragments tilted toward her as she moved, attending—and she understood, in a way that made her breath catch, that she wasn't invisible here. One shard flashed with sudden blue light, the pulse of it refracted through the fog like a distant lantern carried by someone she couldn't see but could almost sense.

She moved toward it on instinct, her feet barely disturbing the water-thin floor. The condensation on the pillars caught the low luminescence, tiny beads catching light like tears, or like promises. She heard whispers rising from the fog: Sam’s voice, "I’m gay, Andy. Like, for real," and "You talk like you know me," and something softer—"I love you, Andy Cooper"—and the last one made her hand shake as she reached for the mirror shard's edge, ready to enter the next room.