Chapter 96

• The train ride out of the city passed in a rhythm that did not need to be named. I sat by the window, watching the buildings fall away into trees, fields, and the kind of stillness I had forgotten I once knew. The tracks hummed steadily beneath me, each turn and sway pulling me closer to a woman I had not seen in over a decade. She had not called. She had not written. But she had sent fabric.
• The letter had arrived two days earlier, handwritten in the sharp, slanted script I remembered from the edge of my mother’s studio notes. It had been folded carefully around a swatch of cloth that looked older than I was, the weave faintly uneven, hand-dyed in a tone that defied easy color. Somewhere between slate and smoke, but not quite either.
• She had signed the letter with only her initials.