REMI'S POV
The inside of Carol's house smelled like lavender and old paper and the particular dusty warmth of a house that has been grieved in recently but is slowly being lived in again.
It was the same house. Same narrow hallway. Same hook by the door where Carol had hung her coats with the same organizational logic she'd applied to everything — largest on the left, working toward the door. The hooks were empty now but the arrangement was still visible as a ghost in the plaster, in the four small circles of faded paint where the hooks had been.
I stood in the doorway for a moment. Nadia waited, reading the situation with the patience of someone who understood that re-entering a place you'd left at twenty-four after everything that had happened since was not a simple crossing of a thre
