The text came through at 2:47 AM, and Janet knew before she even looked at the screen. She’d been lying awake in the dark of Tom’s apartment—their apartment, she corrected herself bitterly, though the lease had only ever been in Tom’s name—listening to the muffled sounds from the bedroom. The rhythmic creaking. The breathless laughter. The woman’s voice that definitely wasn’t hers.

Can you please be gone by morning? I’ll leave you alone to pack. —M

Professional. Considerate, even. That was Tom all over. Thoughtful enough to fuck someone else in their bed while Janet slept on the couch, but at least she’d give her privacy to pack her things.

Janet sat up, her leather jacket creaking in the silence. She didn’t cry. She’d done enough of that three weeks ago when she’d found the messages, when Tom had sworn it was nothing, when Janet had been stupid enough to believe her. Now there was just a hollow ache where something vital used to be, like the phantom pain of a missing limb.

She started packing in the dark.

The record store died slower than the relationship, but just as inevitably.

“I’m sorry, Janet. I really am.” Tom wouldn’t meet her eyes as he handed over the keys to the building. “If it were up to me—”

“I know.” Janet’s fingers closed around the cold metal. Ten years she’d poured into Vinyl Underground. Ten years of building something from nothing, of cultivating a community, of hand-selecting every album that lined those walls. “It’s not your fault the economy’s in the toilet.”

But it felt like fault. It felt like failure. The landlord needed the space for something more profitable—a boutique coffee shop, probably, or another soulless startup office. Something that would actually make money in this new world where music was just data, where physical media was a quaint anachronism, where places like hers were relics of a dying age.

She’d already sold off most of the inventory at a loss. The rest sat in boxes in a storage unit she could barely afford. Her staff—all three of them—had found other jobs. The community she’d built had scattered to the winds, their gathering place erased as cleanly as if it had never existed.

Janet stood outside the empty storefront for a long time, looking at the dark windows, the bare walls visible through the glass. A decade of her life, reduced to nothing.

Her phone buzzed. The storage unit payment was due. Her bank account was nearly empty. Tom’s text had made it clear she had three days to find somewhere else to live.

There was only one option left, and the thought of it made her stomach turn.

The phone rang four times before Carla answered.

“Hello?”

That voice. Calm, measured, with that infuriating serenity that had always made Janet want to scream. She hadn’t heard it in five years—not since the funeral, not since she’d stood in the lawyer’s office and learned that her father had left everything to his widow, that Janet had been written out of the will entirely.

“It’s Janet.”

A pause. Long enough that Janet almost hung up.

“Janet. I ... this is unexpected.”

“Yeah, well.” Janet’s grip tightened on the phone. Pride was a luxury she couldn’t afford anymore. “I need a place to stay. Temporarily. Just until I get back on my feet.”

Another pause. Janet could picture Carla on the other end, probably sitting in that sunroom she’d always loved, probably wearing some flowing linen thing, probably sipping herbal tea from one of those handmade ceramic mugs.

“What happened?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” Carla’s voice was careful, neutral. “The house is ... it’s still your home, Janet. Technically. You can stay as long as you need.”

Your home. As if Janet had ever felt at home there after Carla had arrived. As if those years hadn’t been a cold war fought in silence and sidelong glances.

“I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll prepare the guest room.”

Not her old room, Janet noticed. The guest room. As if she were a stranger.

Maybe she was.

Fifteen years earlier

The music was too loud—it was always too loud—and Janet knew Carla could hear it all the way downstairs. That was the point. Slayer’s “Raining Blood” at maximum volume, the double bass drums like artillery fire, Tom Araya’s vocals scraping raw against the walls of her bedroom.

She was sprawled on her bed in ripped fishnets and a Misfits t-shirt, her freshly dyed black hair spread across the pillow, when Carla knocked. Not pounded, not demanded entry—just knocked, three precise taps that somehow cut through the chaos.

Janet turned the music down. Not off. Never off.

“What?”

Carla opened the door. She was twenty-six, only eight years older than Janet, but she might as well have been from another planet. White linen pants. A soft blue top that probably cost more than Janet’s entire wardrobe. Hair pulled back in a neat bun. She looked like she’d stepped out of a yoga studio catalog, all peace and light and insufferable zen.

“Your father asked me to remind you about dinner. We have guests coming.”

“Tell Dad I’m not hungry.”

“Janet—”

“I said I’m not hungry.” Janet sat up, her combat boots thudding against the floor. “What part of that is hard to understand?”

Something flickered across Carla’s face. Not anger—Carla never showed anger. But something else, something Janet couldn’t quite name. Her stepmother’s eyes traveled over her, quick and sharp, before snapping away.

“You’re being childish.”

“And you’re being a gold-digging bitch who married my dad for his money, but we all have our roles to play.”

Janet expected a reaction to that. Expected Carla to finally lose that maddening composure, to yell, to fight back. Instead, Carla’s face went carefully blank.

“Wear something appropriate. Dinner is at seven.” Her voice was ice. “And turn that noise down.”

She left, closing the door with a soft click that was somehow worse than a slam.

Janet cranked the music back up, but the victory felt hollow. There had been something in Carla’s eyes in that moment before she’d looked away. Something that looked almost like pain. Or hunger. Or both.

It had scared Janet more than she wanted to admit.

After that, Carla had been different. Colder. More distant. She’d stopped trying to connect, stopped making overtures, stopped pretending they could be anything like family. She’d treated Janet with a polite hostility that was worse than outright hatred, because at least hatred was honest.

Janet had told herself she didn’t care. Had thrown herself deeper into the music, the rebellion, the carefully constructed armor of not-giving-a-fuck. Had counted down the days until she could leave.

She’d never understood why Carla’s coldness had hurt so much.

The house looked the same. Smaller, maybe, the way childhood places always shrink when you return to them as an adult, but essentially unchanged. The same craftsman architecture, the same manicured lawn, the same sense of old money and quiet respectability that had always made Janet feel like an intruder.

Her car—a battered Honda with a failing transmission—looked obscene in the circular driveway, like a stain on expensive fabric.

Janet sat behind the wheel for a long moment, her hands tight on the steering wheel. Everything she owned was packed in the back seat and trunk. Clothes, books, her record collection, the few pieces of furniture Tom had let her take. Her entire life reduced to what could fit in a dying car.

The front door opened.

Carla stood on the threshold, backlit by the warm light from inside. She was older now—forty-one, Janet calculated—but she’d aged the way some women do, growing into herself rather than diminishing. Her hair was longer than Janet remembered, shot through with silver she hadn’t bothered to dye. She wore jeans and a simple sweater. No makeup. She looked ... real. Human.

It was somehow worse than if she’d been the same pristine ice queen from Janet’s memories.

Janet got out of the car slowly, her boots crunching on the gravel.

They stood looking at each other across the driveway. Ten years of silence stretched between them. Ten years of unspoken things, of old wounds, of a history neither of them knew how to address.

“Hi,” Janet said finally, because someone had to say something.

“Hi.” Carla’s hands were clasped in front of her, her knuckles white. “Do you need help with your things?”

“I can manage.”

“Of course.” Carla stepped back, holding the door open. “Come in. Please.”

Janet grabbed a duffel bag from the back seat and walked toward the house. Toward her stepmother. Toward whatever came next.

As she passed through the doorway, she caught Carla’s scent—something herbal and clean, maybe lavender—and felt an unexpected tightness in her chest.

This was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake.

But she was out of options, out of money, out of places to run.

She stepped inside, and Carla closed the door behind them with a soft, final click.

The first morning, Janet woke to the smell of coffee and something sweeter—cinnamon, maybe cardamom. She lay still for a moment in the unfamiliar bed, disoriented by the quality of light filtering through curtains that weren’t hers, in a room that smelled faintly of lavender and clean cotton instead of the cigarettes and takeout that had permeated the apartment she’d shared with Tom.

When she finally emerged, showered and dressed in ripped black jeans and an old Bikini Kill t-shirt, she found Carla in the kitchen, barefoot in yoga pants and a loose linen top, her hair pulled back in a messy bun. There were fresh muffins cooling on a rack.

“I wasn’t sure if you were a coffee person,” Carla said, gesturing to the French press on the counter. “But I made some just in case. And there’s tea—I have about fifteen kinds—if you prefer.”

“Coffee’s good,” Janet said, hovering in the doorway. The kitchen was sun-drenched and spotless, all white subway tile and butcher block counters. A far cry from the cramped galley kitchen she’d left behind, where the dishes were always piled in the sink and the linoleum was peeling at the corners.

They moved around each other carefully those first few days, overly polite, hyperaware of boundaries. Janet kept her things contained to her room and the small attached bathroom. She bought her own groceries and labeled them carefully in the refrigerator, even though Carla kept insisting it wasn’t necessary. She wore headphones when she listened to music, kept her door closed, tried to make herself as small and unobtrusive as possible.

Carla, for her part, seemed to be trying too hard. She was always asking if Janet needed anything, if the room was comfortable, if the water pressure in the shower was okay. She’d leave little notes—”Went to teach a class, back by 7” or “Help yourself to anything in the fridge”—in looping handwriting on the kitchen counter. It was thoughtful, but it made Janet feel like a guest, temporary, like she was staying in an Airbnb run by someone who’d once made her life hell.

On the third night, Janet came home late from a job interview that had gone poorly—they’d taken one look at her tattoos and nose ring and she could see them mentally filing her application in the trash—to find a plate covered in foil on the counter with another note: “Made too much pasta. It’s the kind with the sundried tomatoes you mentioned liking. —C”

Janet stood there for a long moment, staring at the note. She’d mentioned it once, in passing, days ago. She hadn’t thought Carla was even listening.

The pasta was still warm. Janet ate it standing at the counter, and it was perfect—al dente, the sauce rich with garlic and olive oil, the tomatoes sweet and tangy. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was, how tired of granola bars and bodega sandwiches. When Carla emerged from her room an hour later, Janet had washed the plate and left it in the drying rack.

“Thank you,” Janet said. “For the food.”

Carla smiled, and it was different from her usual careful, polite smile. Warmer. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you liked it.”

The ice began to thaw in increments.

Janet discovered that Carla woke at dawn to meditate, sitting cross-legged on a cushion in the living room, facing the windows that overlooked the street. The first time Janet stumbled out early, unable to sleep, she’d frozen in the hallway, not wanting to interrupt. But Carla had simply opened her eyes, smiled slightly, and closed them again. An invitation to share the space, not an intrusion.

After that, Janet started making coffee quietly during Carla’s meditation, leaving a cup for her on the side table. Carla never mentioned it, but she always drank it, and sometimes Janet would find her own favorite mug—the chipped black one with the fading Ramones logo—washed and back in the cabinet, even though it had been Janet’s turn to do dishes.

They developed a rhythm. Carla taught yoga classes most mornings and evenings, which meant the apartment was Janet’s during the day while she job-hunted and tried to figure out what came next. Janet worked the occasional bartending shift at a dive bar in Bushwick, which meant she came home late, letting herself in quietly, often finding Carla asleep on the couch with a book open on her chest and the TV playing some nature documentary on mute.

The first time it happened, Janet had stood there awkwardly, unsure whether to wake her. Carla looked different in sleep—younger, more vulnerable, her face soft and unguarded. Finally, Janet had grabbed the throw blanket from the armchair and draped it over her, then retreated to her room.

In the morning, Carla had said, “Thank you for the blanket,” and Janet had shrugged, uncomfortable with the gratitude, with the intimacy of it.

“You looked cold,” she’d said.

Their contrasting aesthetics should have clashed—Janet’s collection of band posters and thrifted punk paraphernalia slowly creeping out of her room and into the shared spaces, Carla’s carefully curated minimalism of plants and neutral tones and the small altar in the corner with crystals and a Buddha statue. But somehow it worked. Janet’s battered leather jacket looked right hanging next to Carla’s cream-colored cardigan on the coat rack. The stack of Janet’s dog-eared paperbacks—Patti Smith, Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea—sat companionably beside Carla’s collection of yoga philosophy and poetry on the coffee table.

“I like it,” Carla said one evening, gesturing to the Sleater-Kinney poster Janet had tacked up in the hallway. “The colors are amazing.”