Myra
The drive back from Happy Pines was a blur of white lines and existential dread. The truck was huge, but I felt small inside it. I kept thinking about Dot’s hands—those gnarled, capable hands that should have been wielding a rolling pin, reduced to tangling with yarn in a room that smelled like the end of things.
“Winning for the sake of winning.”
The words looped in my head, a recursive error in my internal programming. I’d spent my whole life using "success" as armor to protect the girl who used to study by candlelight. But sitting in the cab of Tony’s truck, looking at the keys he’d handed me without hesitation, I felt less like a champion and more like a ghost. I was twenty-eight years old, and I was still fighting battles for a fifteen-year-old girl who didn't exist anymore.
