I froze halfway down the stairs.
She was standing by the window, sunlight burning the edges of her hair into gold. The woman from the fire. The one whose hand had reached through the smoke.
My chest forgot how to rise.
She turned — slow, graceful — and her eyes found mine. For a split second, I thought I saw it there: recognition. The ghost of a memory neither of us should have.
But then she smiled.
Polite. Warm. A stranger's smile.
"Oh," she said softly, "you must be Ayla."
My name in her mouth hurt.
Like hearing a song I'd written in another lifetime.
I nodded, too quickly. "Yeah. You're…"
"Mara," she finished for me, offering her hand. "Your brother's fiancée."
Her hand.
The same one that once tried to pull me from the fire.
The room felt too bright, the walls too close. My brother appeared then — cheerful, proud — wrapping an arm around her waist.
"Ayla! You're up! This is Mara — we got engaged while you were still recovering. Crazy timing, huh?"
Recovering.
Right.
That's what they thought this was — recovery.
Not resurrection.
I smiled because that's what people do when the world makes no sense.
Mara smiled back, but there was something in her eyes — a flicker, a shiver, gone before I could catch it.
"It's so good to finally meet you," she said.
Finally.
As if we'd been waiting for this.
As if the universe had planned it.
⸻
The kitchen smelled like toast and honey when we sat down.
My brother — Evan, that was his name now — poured coffee, humming some pop song I didn't recognize. He kept glancing at Mara like he couldn't believe she was real.
I knew that look.
I'd worn it once.
Mara moved gracefully, quietly, like someone who carried sunlight with her. She asked me if I wanted sugar, if I was feeling okay, if the doctor said I could walk around yet.
Her kindness pressed against my chest like a bruise.
I wanted to ask her if she dreamed of fire.
If her skin ever felt too tight, as if memory itself was trying to crawl out.
Instead, I said, "I'm fine. Just… foggy."
She smiled again, eyes crinkling. "Foggy's normal. The mind holds on to strange things after a shock."
Shock.
Yes.
That's one word for dying and waking in another life.
Evan laughed at something she said, and she turned toward him, sunlight pouring through her hair. I caught myself watching — not like a sister, not like a stranger, but like someone watching a door that might open to the impossible.
Because if she was here — if she had returned — then maybe the fire hadn't been an ending.
Maybe it was the beginning of something neither of us understood yet.
When breakfast ended, she offered to help my mother clean up. I stayed in my chair, tracing the rim of my coffee cup, my pulse still tripping.
And then I heard her hum — low, soft, almost unconscious — the same lullaby she used to sing in our old house, back when I was twelve and she was fifteen, and we thought forever meant something.
The same melody.
The same pause after the second line.
I closed my eyes. The scent of smoke brushed past me like memory had weight.
And in that moment, I knew — she didn't remember me.
But something deep inside her did.