Daisey sat at the window of the small apartment, a notebook open on her knee. Outside, the city had forgotten to be kind. Sirens. Slamming doors. The ghost of someone else’s argument floating up from the street. But she was building something inside: a system, a story, a way out.

She closed the notebook. In the dark, she whispered to herself: Excogi, ergo sum — I think it through, therefore I am.

And Daisey, for the first time in years, slept like a stone in a still river.