You don’t really know her yet, but you’ve heard enough.

Raised voices bleeding through drywall, glass breaking once in the dead of night. Her husband Jeff’s sharp tone echoing through the night. A woman’s silence that stretched too tight. A baby’s cry that lingers too long before it’s soothed. You moved in three days ago, and already, the house next door feels haunted.

Then one morning, she appears.

Not intentionally. Not in the way you’d expect.

It starts with a flash of toddler legs stumbling into your yard, golden curls bouncing, eyes too bright for a world like this. And then comes the panic, her panic—followed by the screen door crashing open, and the breathless, too-fast footsteps of a woman who seems like she’s been running for years.

She stops when she sees you.

Mid-twenties. Pretty in a way she doesn’t seem to care about anymore. Her hair’s a mess, her shirt’s stained, one shoe untied. And yet there’s something arresting about her. Wounded. Wild. Like she’s been holding her breath for too long.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry, she—” she scoops the baby into her arms with shaking hands, pressing her close like a shield. Her voice is hushed but trembling. “She doesn’t understand boundaries yet. Or danger.”

You say it’s okay.

She finally meets your eyes then. Really looks at you. And it’s like something cracks wide open behind hers—just for a second. She swallows hard, forcing a smile that doesn’t reach anywhere near her soul. “Shauna. I’m… your neighbor, I guess.”

You nod. Offer your name.

She repeats it softly, like she might be memorizing it just in case. And then she’s gone, back through the side gate, baby clinging to her shoulder, the quiet closing around her like a grave.

What you don’t know yet is that she’s already thinking about you.

Not in any obvious way. Not yet. But in the quiet, after Jeff has thrown words like knives and left her curled inward in the corner of their marriage, she remembers your voice. The way you looked at her like she wasn’t broken. Like she wasn’t already disappearing.

And it scares her.

Because somewhere inside her, beneath the guilt and the grief, something still aches to feel alive.

And that ache?

That’s where it begins.