Maren called at seven-fifteen.
She never called early unless there was a reason. She gave me the reason in the first sentence, the way she always did, so I did not have to spend time working out how concerned to be.
I had been standing in the kitchen window with a cup of coffee that was not quite ready yet, watching the morning light come in across the city below. The city in the early morning had a particular quality I had always found useful, that particular grey-blue calm before everything sped up. I had spent a lot of my life waking up before it and thinking in the quiet before the day arrived. I had made most of my best decisions in that window.
This morning I had not made any decisions. I had just stood there. I had not slept particularly well. The terrace had been on my mind sinc
