Their mother used to soften that.
When Lily was little, her mom would sit behind her on the edge of the bed, brush her hair slow, and describe the day outside in simple, steady words: the color of the sky, the shapes of clouds, the way the trees looked when the wind pushed through them. She didn’t do it like a performance. She did it like she was giving her daughter a gift.
But then her mother died.
And the house rearranged itself around that loss like furniture shoved against a locked door.
Lily was twenty-one now, and the Moreno home in their small town—an old place with polished floors and framed family photos she could not see—felt more like a museum than a home. Everything had a place. Everything had a rule. Everything was meant to look perfect to people passing through.
Lily was not.
