The seventh day began with a silence that felt deliberate.

Priya rose earlier than usual. She moved through the master bedroom with careful, almost soundless steps, watching Serkan’s sleeping face for a long minute before she left the room. Downstairs she made tea and stood at the kitchen window, but her mind was not on the driveway. It was on the guest-room door, on the way Eda’s collar had sat a little too high the previous morning, on the faint scent she sometimes thought she caught in the hallway after midnight, on the way Serkan’s body had felt both familiar and slightly distant even during their intense anniversary reclaiming.