Novels by Orezi

Emma came over the next evening carrying takeout instead of wine this time, a small, deliberate shift Ava noticed and appreciated, the two of them settling onto the couch with cartons of noodles between them like they had a hundred times before, back when their problems were smaller and entirely their own."You've decided," Emma said, before Ava had said a word. "I can tell. You've got the same look you had right before you told my father off in his own driveway."Ava laughed despite herself. "I haven't officially decided anything.""But you're leaning.""I'm leaning." Ava set down her chopsticks, turning the truth over one more time before she said it out loud, testing its weight. "I think I'm going to take it, Emma. Not forever, maybe. Maybe a year, maybe longer, I don't actually know yet. But I need to build something that isn't shaped by proximity to your family's chaos before I can trust that anything I build afterward is real."Emma was quiet for a moment, and Ava braced herself

The list grew longer over the following days, filling pages Ava hadn’t expected to fill. Not a pros and cons list exactly, nothing so tidy. More like an excavation, digging back past the last two years to find whatever was left of the person she’d been before any of it started.She wrote down that she missed running along the river, the habit she’d confessed to Nathaniel weeks ago and never actually resumed. She wrote down that she wanted to work somewhere her name wouldn’t trigger a Google search full of tabloid headlines before anything about her actual career came up. She wrote down that she loved marketing, genuinely, the strategy and the psychology of it, and that somewhere in the last year that love had gotten buried under crisis management and survival instinct until she’d nearly forgotten it was there at all.She wrote, near the bottom of the third page, that she didn’t know if she wanted to leave Damon. That surprised her, seeing it in her own handwriting, because she’d assum

The email from Nathaniel arrived four days later, formal in subject line but warmer once she opened it, the kind of message that had clearly been drafted and redrafted before he let himself send it.“I heard about the resignation through the grapevine, and I’m sorry it came to that. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you had another good option left. I wanted to reach out because a position just opened on my team here in London, leading brand strategy for our expanding client roster. No connection to the Blackwood accounts, no overlap with anything from the last year. It would mean relocating, at least for a while. I understand if that’s the last thing you want right now, but I’d rather you hear the offer from me directly than not hear it at all.”Ava read it three times, sitting at her kitchen table with the box from her old office still only half unpacked in the corner.She hadn’t been looking. She hadn’t updated a resume or reached out to a single contact in the four days since she

Damon found out about the resignation from Emma, who found out from Ava herself in a short, steady phone call that afternoon, no drama in her voice, just fact.He tried calling three times before he gave up and drove to her building instead, standing outside her door at nine that night with no plan beyond needing to see her face.She opened the door in sweatpants, hair pulled back, the box from her office still sitting unopened on the kitchen counter behind her.“You heard,” she said, stepping back to let him in without being asked, which he took as a small mercy given everything.“Emma told me. I would have rather heard it from you.”“I would have gotten there. I needed a day that wasn’t about managing anyone else’s reaction to it first.”He nodded, absorbing that, and didn’t argue the point, which she noticed and was quietly grateful for. He stood in her living room looking lost in a way she rarely saw on him, all his usual command nowhere in evidence.“I should have fixed this befo

Her boss called her in on a Thursday morning, and the moment Ava saw his face through the glass wall of his office, she knew this wasn’t going to be another version of contained.“I need to be straight with you,” he said, once she’d closed the door. “Halden’s staying. The Meridian Cross documentation held up, the story mostly burned out. But two other clients raised concerns this week. Nothing official. Just questions about whether the agency’s judgment is compromised by how much personal drama keeps intersecting with the account. I fought for you. I meant what I said last time, that I don’t think you did anything wrong. But I’m one person, and the partners are starting to ask questions I can’t keep answering with your track record alone.”“What are you telling me.”“I’m telling you I don’t have a formal action to take. I’m telling you that if this happens a fourth time, I might not have a choice about it.” He said it gently, which somehow made it worse than if he’d been harsh. “You’r

Emma showed up at Ava’s apartment the next evening, uninvited, a bottle of wine in one hand and an expression that suggested she already knew, somehow, that something had shifted.“Damon told you,” Ava said, stepping back to let her in.“He told me you asked for space. He didn’t say why, exactly, just that he thought I should hear it from him instead of finding out secondhand.” Emma set the wine on the counter without opening it, more prop than intention. “I’m not here to fix it. I don’t think I’m in a position to fix anything right now.”“What does that mean?”Emma sat down heavily at the small kitchen table, and for the first time in months she looked less like the composed, healing version of herself Ava had watched rebuild steadily over the past year, and more like the frightened, uncertain woman from the very beginning of all of this.“I’ve been trying to hold everyone together,” Emma said. “You and Damon. Damon and Julian. Julian and the rest of the family that still doesn’t ful

The old woman lived two houses down the lake road, in a small weathered cottage with a garden that had grown wild around the edges. I had watched her for years from the upstairs windows, a quiet figure who walked the shoreline every morning with a cane and a wide-brimmed hat. She never came close to my house. She always stopped at the edge of the property line and turned back, as if some invisible boundary kept her away. On the day she finally crossed that line, the air inside the walls felt different, heavier, like the house itself was listening.Sophie was playing in the front yard that afternoon, collecting smooth stones from the gravel path and lining them up in careful rows. Claire sat on the porch steps with a book she was not reading, her eyes following her daughter while her mind stayed somewhere else. Ryan was still at work. The lake lay quiet under a thin layer of afternoon haze. I hovered just inside the open front door, close enough to feel the warm air mixing with the col

Sophie set the tea party with the same careful seriousness she brought to everything she loved. I watched from the corner of her room as she arranged four tiny plastic cups on the low table she had pulled into the middle of the floor. She placed a saucer under each one, then set out a plate of imaginary cookies made from crumpled paper. Her dolls sat in a neat circle: the bear with the missing eye, the doll with the yellow dress, and an empty space she always left for me.“Diane, sit here,” she said, patting the floor beside the yellow-dress doll. “You’re the guest of honor today.”I lowered myself into the space she had made for me. The air around the table grew colder, the way it always did when I stayed close. Sophie smiled and poured invisible tea into my cup first.“It’s not too hot,” she told me. “I made it just the way you like it. Vanilla and a little bit of honey.”She knew the scent that clung to me. She had never been told about the vanilla candles I once burned, yet someho

Claire noticed things feel off almost immediately, but she said nothing yet. I watched her closely as the days passed, her sharp, intuitive eyes scanning every room with growing uncertainty. She would pause in the middle of unpacking a box, her hands stilling on a stack of books, and look around as if she felt someone standing right behind her. I made sure she did. I let my cold presence brush against her back when she was alone in the kitchen. She shivered and rubbed her arms, but she didn’t call out to Ryan. She just stood there for a long moment, breathing slowly, trying to convince herself it was nothing.Sophie was the center of my world now. The little girl reminded me so much of Lily that I couldn’t stay away. I followed her everywhere, letting my presence grow stronger around her. She saw me clearly. She talked to me when her parents weren’t looking. She drew pictures of us together and left them under her pillow. She told me secrets and laughed at my cold touch.“Diane, you’r

Sophie reminded me so much of Lily that I couldn’t stay away. Every time the little girl laughed or ran through the hallway with her curly hair bouncing, it felt like a knife twisting in the emptiness inside me. Lily would be old now, probably gone, but Sophie was here. Alive. Seeing me. Talking to me. Choosing me. I began testing small disturbances around the house, not to scare them away, but to stay close to her. To make them feel me. To make Sophie’s parents understand that I was real.It started with cold spots. I would hover near Sophie when she played alone in her room, letting my presence drop the temperature around her. She would shiver and giggle.“You’re cold again, Diane,” she said one afternoon, wrapping her arms around herself. “But I like it. It feels like you’re hugging me.”I let the cold spread a little further, touching the air near her dolls. The plastic figures seemed to shiver. Sophie clapped her hands in delight.Claire walked past the doorway and paused. She ru

Sophie’s words changed everything on a quiet afternoon when the sun was streaming through the windows and the house felt almost peaceful. I had been following her all day, drawn to her like a moth to the only flame left in my cold existence. She was playing in the hallway with her dolls, setting up a little picnic on the floor. Her curly hair bounced as she arranged the tiny plastic plates.“The lady likes tea too,” she said out loud, pouring imaginary tea into an extra cup. “She’s sad but she’s nice. She lives here.”Claire was in the living room unpacking boxes. She paused, a book in her hand, and looked toward the hallway.“Sophie? Who are you talking to, sweetheart?”Sophie looked up with that bright, innocent smile. “The lady in the hall. Her name is Diane. She says this was her house before.”Claire’s face went pale. The book slipped from her hands and hit the floor with a soft thud. She walked slowly into the hallway, her eyes darting around as if trying to see what Sophie saw.

The days after their first night settled into a kind of rhythm that I watched with growing intensity. Ryan left early each morning for his new job as an architect, kissing Claire goodbye and ruffling Sophie’s hair before driving off. Claire worked from home part time, unpacking boxes and arranging their new life while trying to maintain some sense of normalcy for their daughter. Sophie spent her days exploring the house, playing in the yard by the lake, and talking to me when her parents weren’t paying attention.I stayed close to Sophie constantly. She had become my anchor in this long emptiness. The way she looked at me with those bright, trusting eyes reminded me so much of Lily that it hurt in the best and worst ways. She would set up tea parties in her room and pour imaginary tea for me. She drew pictures of us together and hid them under her pillow. She told me secrets about her fears of the dark and how she missed her old friends. I listened to every word, pouring what comfort