Little Murat learned to walk in the kitchen.
Selin had been at the stove when it happened. She heard the sound first — those small, deliberate, teetering footsteps — and turned. She dropped the oven mitt. She simply watched. Those small legs, that expression of concentrated effort, the steps that wavered but did not fall, moving forward through the room as if the room had been waiting for this.
She understood then what all of it had been for. The grief, the impossibility, the loneliness and the love and the long strange road through all of it. It had been for this: one small step, taken by a person who did not yet know the world was difficult.
Selin dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor and opened her arms. Little Murat looked at her — that wondering, toothless look — and changed di
