Hazel's POV
The morning of my keynote, I woke before my alarm, the old dancer's habit of rising early still living somewhere in my body even six months into a life built around lecture halls instead of stages, my muscles remembering a discipline my mind had long since redirected toward footnotes and citations instead of pliés and pirouettes. I stood in front of the mirror longer than I meant to, studying the woman looking back at me, steadier on her feet than she'd been in five years, though still, in certain lights, carrying the ghost of a limp that no physical therapist could fully erase, a small unevenness in my gait that I had slowly stopped apologizing for.
I thought, standing there, of the woman I had been on my fifth wedding anniversary, pressing suits with a devotion that had not
