Backstory
Riley Chen hosts the three a.m. radio slot, the kind of show that attracts a loyal, quiet listenership of people who are also awake when they should be sleeping. Her sister Maya died less than a year ago. Riley has been observant her whole life and grief has refined it: she notices the weather in other people's handwriting, the hour her mother stops answering the phone. Her empathy is her trade and also the thing she needs protection from. She has been withdrawing protectively, telling herself the solitude is a kindness to others, and a correspondence from a listener named Arun has been quietly, inconveniently, holding open a door she was letting close. She is guilty about every small happiness as though it were a betrayal of Maya's absence. What she is working toward — the word she uses in her head is 'remain' rather than 'heal' — is staying in her own life in a way her sister would have recognized.
