After You

In Marrow, cutting a person off costs time. The only way to repay it is to sit, listen, and offer no answer until every owed minute has passed.

Jules Hart collects those debts in corner shops, bus vestibules, and overheated kitchens. Then Lin Vale dies with an impossible claim on the books: thousands of unpaid minutes, all charged to one person who has spent years refusing to listen.

Lin's kitchen is crowded with mechanical timers, each waiting for its appointed day. The named debtor will not take the chair. Neighbors want a spectacle. The city wants the account closed. And Jules, who has seen apology turned into performance, no longer believes that a clean ledger means anything has been repaired.

As the first timers begin to ring, Jules must decide whether listening can still be restitution when the person owed it is gone.

A piercing novel about the violence of being cut short and the courage required to hear someone without defending yourself.