I woke up before Eli.
That almost never happened. He was a natural early riser, the kind of child who treated sunrise as a personal invitation, and most mornings I heard him before my alarm went off, small feet on the floor, the soft thud of Captain bear being dragged out of bed behind him.
But that first morning at Angela's I was awake at five and the house was still and quiet and I lay in the spare bedroom with the unfamiliar ceiling above me and listened to my son breathe through the slightly open door between our rooms and thought about everything and nothing at the same time.
The room was warm.
Angela had put a thick duvet on the bed and a glass of water on the nightstand and a small lamp that threw a soft amber light across the ceiling and the combination of those three small tho
