Sarah found Carol in the kitchen at five-fifteen, standing at the stove turning eggs in a cast iron pan with the focused attention of someone who believed that small things done properly were their own form of resistance.
Carol didn't look up. "Sit down. Eat before you think. Thinking on an empty stomach produces the wrong kind of thoughts."
Sarah sat.
The kitchen was warm from the stove and smelled of coffee and woodsmoke and something herbal she couldn't identify, dried bundles of something hanging from a low beam above the window. Outside the glass the dark was beginning to separate from itself, the tree line emerging in thin grey outline against a sky that hadn't decided yet what it was going to be.
Carol set a plate in front of her. Eggs and toast and sliced tomato. Then coffee wi
