The California light had that late-afternoon honey to it when Nia Ellison stepped out of the rideshare and stood for a moment on the sidewalk of the house that still smelled, in her memory, like Saturday pancakes and Marcus's cologne. Seven months. Seven months of corporate housing and fluorescent conference rooms and silk-pressed hair kept neat for presentations that decided whether her career would finally open or stay politely closed. Her camel coat sat correctly on her shoulders. Her cream blouse was still tucked. Her heels clicked once on the walkway before she decided to go quietly, the surprise intact, her briefcase in one hand and the wheeled suitcase trailing behind her like a second thought.
She found the front door unlocked. That should have told her something. It didn't. She pushed it open and set the briefcase and suitcase beside the console where the family photographs lived—Amara at three with frosting on her chin, Marcus and Nia on their wedding day, the three of them at the pier the summer before she left. Children's shoes lay by the stairs in a small abandoned pile. Moving boxes, sealed and labeled in Marcus's careful block print, stood stacked beside the staircase like a quiet accusation she had not yet learned how to read.
Amara appeared first, six years old and flying, socks skidding on the hardwood.
"Mom! You came before moving day!"
Nia laughed, the sound catching somewhere between joy and the first thin edge of confusion, and dropped to one knee so her daughter could crash into her coat.
"Moving day?"