Aerys sat up straighter and looked out the window. The streets were narrower here. A boy in a faded jersey was dribbling a half-flat basketball on a cracked court. An old woman fanned smoke away from a roadside grill. A mechanic was bent over the hood of a car that looked older than the buildings around it. None of it belonged to the world Aerys lived in now, yet all of it had once belonged to her.
Her hands went cold.
Eight years.
Eight years since she had last driven through these streets. Eight years since the police had come to her office and spoken in soft, careful voices. Eight years since she had fallen to the floor and screamed until her throat burned because Emeka Okoro—the man with the patient smile and kind eyes and strong hands—was gone.
She closed her eyes for one brief second and saw him exactly as he had been: laughing in the site office with blueprint paper tucked under one arm, teasing her for skipping lunch again, reaching across a desk to brush a curl away from her face, slipping a ring onto her finger with trembling hands and hopeful eyes. They had been engaged for only six months, but those six months had felt fuller than all the years that came after.
Then he died.
Or so she had believed.
“Ma’am, we’re here,” Mr. Peterson said.
The SUV came to a stop.
Aerys opened her eyes and looked through the window. The old site stood behind a fence stained by weather and neglect. The once-white boards were gray now, leaning in places. Weeds climbed through broken concrete. The trailer office near the front looked small and tired, its steps crooked, its paint peeling like old skin. The whole place looked forgotten.
Just like she had wanted it to be.
“Would you like me to come with you?” Mr. Peterson asked.
“No.” She reached for her briefcase, then changed her mind and left it in the car. “I just need to look around, take a few pictures, confirm the condition, and go. Fifteen minutes.”
He nodded. “I’ll wait here.”
When she stepped out, heat rose from the ground and wrapped around her legs. The air smelled like dirt, rust, old wood, and someone cooking beans somewhere nearby. It smelled like her twenties. It smelled like work. It smelled like the version of herself that still believed love could stay.
She walked toward the trailer slowly, her shoes crunching over broken gravel. “Do this and leave,” she told herself. “Sell the site. Sign the papers. Move on.”
But then she noticed something odd.
The patch of grass leading to the trailer door wasn’t as overgrown as the rest. There was a narrow path through it, like someone had walked there again and again. Aerys frowned. Maybe local children were using the space. Maybe someone had broken in. Maybe a homeless person had found shelter.
Her jaw tightened.
This was still her property.
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