The second morning arrived cold and specific.
Mia was awake before six. She made coffee in Sarah's kitchen and sat at the table in the dark with her hands around the mug and did not open her phone. She had learned over the course of two months that the first thirty minutes of a significant day belonged to her, not to the case. She had made that a rule in week three and she had kept it.
She thought about Nathan saying *there's only the moment we're in.*
She thought about his hand over hers across the restaurant table. The way the admission had landed between them not like a weight but like the removal of one — the specific lightness of a thing that has been true for a while and has finally been said aloud and no longer has to be managed.
She thought about her students. Period two. Perio
