“Why now?” Sheena asked.

“Your mother died,” the woman said. Sheena didn’t recognize her. “She wanted you to have these.”

Her only friend was an old man named Edgar who lived three trailers down. Edgar had fought in a war no one talked about and now spent his days building intricate ships inside glass bottles. He said it taught him patience. Sheena would sit on his porch steps after her shift, the sun just beginning to pink the sky, and watch his gnarled fingers guide tiny masts through narrow necks.

“You’re a Ryder,” it read. “But you were always a Lowtru first. I’m sorry I didn’t stay to see which one you’d become.”

“I know what you mean.” He set down his tweezers. “You think leaving is about geography. It’s not. You can drive a thousand miles and still wake up in the same room. The question isn’t where you go. It’s who you stop being when you get there.”

Sheena Ryder Lowtru.