Chapter 59: The First Step
Lily came downstairs on the third day with her sketchbook.
It was tucked under her arm, worn at the edges, the spine cracked from years of use. Maya saw it and felt something shift in her chest. That sketchbook had been Lily's constant companion since she was a kid—through middle school, through high school, through the first years of college. She'd seen Lily carry it everywhere, had watched her fill its pages with drawings of people and places and things she loved. It had been a lifeline for her, a way to make sense of the world when words failed. She'd filled it with portraits of the family, of the bar, of the mountains that surrounded Nowhere. It was a piece of her soul, a record of who she'd been before everything started to fall apart. Maya remembered the
