My appendix ruptured at 2 a.m., and I called my parents seventeen times before the world began to blur. My mother finally texted back: “Your sister’s baby shower is tomorrow. We can’t leave now.”

The music box would be there beside it, dark wood gleaming faintly in the moonlight.

And I would remember.

I was not in the Crawford house anymore.

I was not on the floor dying.

I was not a child waiting outside a closed door, listening to laughter in rooms where I had never been fully welcome.

I was in my own apartment.

Ground floor. Sunlit kitchen. Basil on the balcony. A key in Gerald’s pocket. A folder in my desk labeled Things I Do Not Have to Carry.

Peace had not come gently. It had arrived like a rescue crew breaking down a door.

But it had come.

For almost three weeks, I believed it might stay.

Then, on a gray Tuesday morning, someone knocked.

Three hard knocks.

Not Gerald. Gerald knocked twice, then called, “It’s me,” as if burglars often announced themselves politely.

Not Richard. He always texted first now.

Not Ruth. Ruth simply opened the door with the emergency key because she considered hesitation a waste of daylight.

I stood in the kitchen holding a mug of tea, my body already knowing what my mind had not accepted.

Trouble had a rhythm.

I set the mug down and looked through the peephole.

A man in a dark coat stood in the hallway, holding an envelope.

“Ms. Holly Crawford?” he called.