The first morning the alley smelled like sawdust and citrus, Maria thought she’d walked into someone else’s life. A cardboard fortress of discarded picture frames and a half-finished dresser leaned against the stucco wall like shipwreck survivors. The sun slanted across a row of palms, and for a second the scene could have been one of those postcard Los Angeles mornings—until a truck backfired and a roll of drywall dust puffed into the air and settled in my hair.
The Morning It All Began
