CHAPTER 37
I came back wrong.
That’s the only way I can explain it.
The world looks the same. My mother still boils water in the same dented kettle every morning. Still watches Channels TV like it’s gospel. Still lines her eyebrows too harshly, as though she’s drawing on armor.
But something in me shifted. Cracked.
It’s in the way I flinch when the wind brushes too close. The way red soil clings to the soles of my shoes, no matter how far I walk. The way the trees whisper when I’m alone.
Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with the taste of dirt in my mouth.
But Glory—my mother—says I’m fine.
“It’s just stress,” she tells me, handing over another glass of water with squeezed lime. “Your body is still recovering.”
From what, she doesn’t say.
She never talks about what
