The first string appeared the day after Nia was married. When she saw it there, anchored into her shoulder and stretching up to disappear into the kitchen ceiling, she told herself she could always go back. She didn’t want too, of course—she loved Richard more than anything and couldn’t picture a future without him, yet the idea of marriage felt outdated. It was a lot of money to spend when they would live the same lives together with or without the ceremony. Nia just didn’t see the point. But everyone, including her mother, grandmother, and all her aunts, seemed to think it was proper and necessary, so she went along with it. It seemed to make Richard happy anyway. Besides, the string wasn’t that much of an annoyance, it was just that sometimes her shoulder would twitch, out of her control. It didn’t happen too often, and she had full command over the rest of her body, so she figured it was best to ignore the thin little strand. A few months after the w...