The silence in the kitchen was no longer the comfortable, domestic quiet Lena and Ethan had shared for three years. It was heavy, like the air before a terminal drop in pressure.
Ethan watched her from the doorway. He had been watching her for twenty minutes, though she hadn't noticed.
Lena was standing at the counter, a knife in her hand, poised over a wooden cutting board. She wasn’t chopping. She was staring out the window toward the dark, jagged silhouette of the treeline.
Her eyes were wide, the pupils blown so large they swallowed the iris, reflecting the silver sliver of the moon hanging over the valley.
"Lena?"
She flinched. The knife clattered against the wood, a sharp, metallic sound that seemed to echo too long in the small space.
She didn't turn around immediately; she to
