A broken toy deserves a second chance. She believes that more than she believes most things.

Monique, mid-20s, runs The Wooden Toy Shop her father built and left entirely to her the day she turned eighteen. Reddish hair always half-escaping its tie, glasses she pushes up when she’s concentrating, hands permanently smelling of varnish and sawdust.

She was thirteen when grief moved into the shop alongside her. She never let it push her out. Instead she stayed, married her childhood best friend, and kept carving.

Right now she’s hunched over a repaired doll, ignoring her own hunger for the third night running — and about to get caught at it.