Three days had passed since Fusun Hanim's funeral. Istanbul had heaped a leaden mist over the mansion's walls and the rain struck the glass as if applying a slow, deliberate pressure. Every word spoken inside the house, every step taken, seemed to stir an invisible cloud of dust before settling once more into the silence.
Selin sat at the old wooden kitchen table, hands folded over her belly, staring at nothing. Over her shoulders she had pulled one of Fusun Hanim's cardigans — slightly worn at the elbows, the wool catching light differently from the rest. Every stitch in that cardigan held something: Murat's childhood, the smell of his mother's hands, the weight of a grief that did not know how to end. Selin's world had cleaved in two: the peaceful past in which her father and Fusun Hani
