The first frost came early that year, frosting the hedges into delicate teeth and turning the terrace into a place of small, brittle beauty. I woke to it against the glass, the cold making the house feel like a warm thing all the more precious. Conley’s arm was a slow, solid anchor across my ribs; Angel’s breath rose in a happy sigh at my knee. For a long, private moment we lay there like creatures who had learned to survive on warmth and would not soon forget how to protect it.
There was work to be done—the foundation never slept—but for once the morning started with a gift: a cargo of postcards from children who’d attended the incubator that season. They were clumsy and bright, full of stick-figure families and wobbly suns, and one of them had a small smudge of chocolate in the corner.
