My parents tossed my wedding invitation straight into the trash and told me not to embarrass myself, but the morning they saw me walking alone down the aisle at a $40 million Malibu estate, with cameras catching every second, they finally understood the daughter they treated like an afterthought had built a life too big for them to ignore.

Sometimes home is where you’re welcome, Harper. Not where you’re from.

It didn’t fix anything. A sentence doesn’t fix a structural failure. You need actual reinforcement, actual labor, actual time.

But it was the first thing in nine days that landed somewhere solid.

On a Saturday morning, there was a knock at the door at eleven. I was on the couch in James’s sweatshirt, which I’d been wearing for two days because it smelled like him and required no decisions.

Mrs. Eunice Park stood in the hallway. Sixty-two years old, retired dry cleaner, hands that had pressed ten thousand shirts and still had the grip strength to prove it. She was holding a large ceramic pot with both hands and a bag of banchan containers hanging from her elbow and an expression that made it clear she had not come to ask how I was feeling.

Have you eaten today?

No. Not yet.

She walked past me into the kitchen.

She set the pot on the stove, turned the burner to medium, and laid out the banchan with the efficiency of a woman who has fed people through every kind of crisis and does not require a conversation to begin doing so. Kimchi. Pickled radish. Seasoned spinach. Tiny dried anchovies.

Sit.

I sat.