Her mother’s flight landed tomorrow morning at 7:42 a.m.
The email confirmation had sat unread in Aliyah’s inbox for two days, a quiet bomb ticking down. She’d stared at the subject line—“Flight Confirmation: Return to Base”—until the screen blurred, then closed the app and locked her phone. Steve had seen the notification flash across her screen during dinner. Neither mentioned it. They ate in near-silence—pasta carbonara he’d made from memory, the kind she used to beg for when she was sixteen—then cleared the table side by side, shoulders brushing, fingers lingering when passing plates. The unspoken deadline hung between them like smoke.
They didn’t speak about stopping.
They simply stopped pretending they could.
It started in the hallway.
Aliyah stepped out of her bedroom at 11:14
