Chapter 1
Chapter 1 — Aunt Celeste’s Car
My life shouldn’t have gone down the path that it had. I should have been picked up by a guardian after my college graduation. I should have been the valedictorian of my high school graduating class. I should have pictures of my best friend and me on my wall of us in our prom dresses with our dates.
But instead, my Aunt Celeste is picking me up from the Bedford Hills Penitentiary in Westchester County. That’s where I’ve been for the last five years after I was found guilty of a crime I never committed.
The air outside the gates smells like wet pavement and exhaust—sharp, metallic, too bright after years of institutional air. Celeste’s old Subaru idles at the curb, its wipers dragging across the windshield in slow, tired arcs. She steps out when she sees me, her hand lifting in a small, trembling wave, as if she’s afraid I might dissolve if she moves too fast.
I clutch the paper bag that holds everything I own. One pair of jeans. A sweatshirt that doesn’t fit right anymore. A toothbrush. A letter to Izzy I never mailed.
Celeste pulls me into a hug that smells like lavender lotion and powdered sugar. The scent hits me so hard I almost fold. It’s the smell of her bakery—of mornings before school, of safety, of a life I lost before I even knew it was slipping away.
“You look thinner,” she murmurs.
“I look free,” I say, though the word feels foreign in my mouth.
Inside the car, the heater rattles, blowing warm air that smells faintly of old coffee and vanilla. Celeste keeps glancing at me like she’s checking for cracks. I stare out the window, watching the trees blur into streaks of green and gray as we head toward Brooklyn Heights.
The world feels too loud. Too colorful. Too alive.
I feel like a ghost haunting it.
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Brooklyn Heights
By the time we reach the neighborhood, the rain has thinned to a mist. Brownstones rise like old sentinels, their windows glowing with the kind of domestic warmth that feels like fiction to me now. People walk dogs. Carry groceries. Laugh into their phones.
Normal life.
A life I don’t remember how to live.
Celeste parks in front of the bakery—Renee’s, named after my grandmother. The sign is still the same soft gold script. The windows are fogged from the ovens inside, warm light spilling onto the sidewalk like a promise I’m not sure I deserve.
A couple walking past slows when they see me. The woman whispers behind her hand. The man’s eyes flick over me like I’m something dangerous left on the street.
Celeste notices. Her jaw tightens.
“Ignore them,” she says.
But I can’t.
Their stares cling to me like damp clothes.
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The Apartment Above the Bakery
We climb the narrow staircase behind the shop, the wood creaking under our steps. The smell of rising dough and cinnamon wraps around me, familiar and suffocating all at once.
My room is exactly as I left it—Celeste kept it that way.
The lavender walls.
The quilt my grandmother made.
The bookshelf with the spines I once loved.
The window overlooked the alley where I used to sneak out to meet Izzy.
It should feel like home.
It doesn’t.
Dust motes drift in the slanted afternoon light, settling on the framed photo of Izzy and me at sixteen—her smile bright, mine shy. I look at it now and feel the world tilt. My throat tightens.
Celeste sets my bag on the bed.
“You can take your time settling in,” she says gently. “No rush.”
But the truth is, I don’t know how to settle anywhere.
Not yet.
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The Town’s Eyes
Later, when Celeste insists I come downstairs for a pastry “just to get something warm in your stomach,” the bell above the bakery door jingles as customers enter. Conversations falter. Eyes flick toward me, then away, then back again.
Whispers ripple like wind through tall grass.
“That’s her.”
“Five years…”
“Poor Izzy.”
“I heard she confessed.”
“I heard she doesn’t remember anything.”
“I heard she’s dangerous.”
I stand there, hands trembling around a mug of hot chocolate, Celeste pressed into them, and I feel it again—that hollow, echoing sensation.
Like I died five years ago, and the world kept spinning without me.
Like I’m haunting the life I should have lived.
