Sera called at seven.
I was at the stove.
The breakfast service was in its second hour, the eggs done, the bread in the oven, the coffee in its third pot of the morning because a pack house at the beginning of a significant week consumed coffee with the specific focused energy of people who understood that what was coming required them to be awake for it. I had been up since before four. I had not slept much. The midnight kitchen and the cold coffee and the weight of Lena's words and the specific ordinary quality of sitting across from Damon in the quiet had stayed with me through the dark hours in the way of things that were too real to dissolve into sleep.
My phone was on the counter beside the stove.
It was not a new phone. It was the one Theo had arranged in the first week of the s
