The basement room faced east.
I knew this because of the light.
It came in through the small window near the ceiling in a thin strip that moved across the concrete floor as the hours passed, the way light moves when the sun is traveling and the world is still. I had been watching it since somewhere around three in the morning when the darkness outside the glass had begun its slow shift from black to the particular deep blue that came before anything else, before grey, before the first suggestion of colour. It was the part of the night I knew best. I had been waking at this hour for years, pulled out of sleep by the cold in my room and the knowledge that the kitchen needed to be running before anyone else in the house opened their eyes.
There was no kitchen to go to this morning.
I lay
