Mara's POV
She'd been carrying the diary for five days before she decided what to do with it.
Not decided, exactly — that implied a clarity she didn't have. It was more like she'd been circling the decision the way you circled something hot, close enough to feel the heat but not ready to touch it, and then one morning she woke up in her flat with the brick wall outside her window and the apologetic coffee machine and her mother's photograph on the windowsill, and something in her had simply run out of reasons to keep circling.
She thought about what Priya had said. Which one are you running from.
She thought about her mother's diary — the anger in it, real and earned and entirely understandable — and about the entry that came after: his son was in the courtroom. I hope your life is kin
