Author's Statement

For twenty-five years I have built worlds where magic announces itself with sparks and spectacle. This story frightened me because the magic is quieter -- the kind that lives in a broken clock or a chipped teacup, the kind we dismiss as sentiment until we lose it forever. I have never written literary fiction without fantasy as a safety net, never asked a story to stand on nothing but ordinary people and the weight of what they carry. I wanted to explore whether the themes I care about most -- love as sacrifice, the courage of small choices, the families we build from wreckage -- could survive without a single wand or spell. This is new territory because there is nowhere to hide.