Lena felt a hand on her shoulder. Not cold. Not skeletal. Just a hand, warm and familiar, smelling of woodsmoke and the rosemary soap her mother used.
Lena turned. Her mother stood behind her, but not quite in the room. She was like a photograph developing in reverse: solid at the edges, fading toward the center. ninitre
Ninitre.
Now Lena wondered.
It was the last thing Lena remembered before the static took over: the word ninitre , scrawled in her mother’s handwriting on a strip of brown packing tape, stuck to the underside of the kitchen table. Lena felt a hand on her shoulder