Pain trapped me in this house. Can love set me free? Death had been chasing me my entire life. I survived the horrors of war, but it was the aftermath that truly destroyed me. People called me a recluse, but the only time I didn’t feel like I was suffocating was inside that house. For my daughter, I kept some semblance of normalcy by implementing a rigid routine. Once a week, I forced myself to walk to the diner at the end of the block—a ritual I despised but relied on as my last anchor to the real world. Until the day a “Closed” sign on the door shattered my fragile existence. Worse, the new owner was the most haunting ghost from my past. It had been years since I’d laid eyes on Gwendolyn Pierce. She hated me—and rightly so. But when a film crew arrived in town to dig into my past, she became my only ally. With my secrets threatened, I leaned on Gwen, forging a connection neither of us could deny. But with a past as dark as ours, I feared it would eclipse any hope for a future. I always said that when Death finally came for me, I would be ready, eager, and alone. Always alone. But for Gwen, maybe I could face the world again as long as it meant I could be alone—with her.