Isabelle landed tomorrow at two.
I knew this the way I knew everything about the timeline — with the precise, slightly sick awareness of someone who had been counting down to something that was simultaneously everything they wanted and everything that was going to cost someone else enormously.
Sunday morning. New Year's Day.
I was at the bakery at five because I had not slept and the bakery was the only place that made sense when sleep wasn't available. I made things. I made a lot of things. By eight o'clock I had produced enough pastry for two days of normal business and had reorganised the dry storage twice and had done essentially nothing about the feeling sitting in my chest like a held breath that had been held too long.
My phone stayed quiet.
Marcus was — somewhere. Home, probab
