The Sister’s Name

The rainy season had left the city with a silence that smelled like wet concrete and unfinished business. The morgue lights hummed low and steady, an indifferent chorus to the grief that filled the narrow corridor. Mara stepped into that light as if into a furnace. Her breath clouded in the cold air; her hands trembled even before she saw the sheet.

She had been called at dawn, an officer with a voice too formal for what he had to say. “We found a body. We need you to ...