Sheena looked at the photographs. She saw herself, but not herself. A girl with pigtails and a gap-toothed smile. A girl who still believed that love was something you could keep if you held on tight enough.

Sheena Ryder Lowtru had stopped checking the mail three years ago. Not because the mailbox was broken, or because the bills had stopped coming, but because every envelope that bore her full name felt like a verdict. Sheena Ryder Lowtru. Four words that didn’t belong together. A collision of her mother’s dreams, her father’s shame, and her own stubborn refusal to let either one win.

“But I’m not staying, either.”

She lived in a town called Mercy, though no one could remember why. The rusted sign at the city limits said Population 412 , but Sheena suspected that number hadn’t been accurate since the textile mill closed. She worked the night shift at the Circle K, stacking beer coolers and wiping down slushie machines while the rest of Mercy dreamed or drank itself into silence. Her uniform was blue and orange, colors that clashed like the two halves of her life.