Morning arrives softly.
For a few seconds, I do not know where I am. There is only warmth, unfamiliar sheets, pale light behind closed curtains and the strange, suspended quiet of a house that is not mine.
Then the room comes back to me.
The guest room. The borrowed clothes. The window.
Yesterday.
My eyes close again for a moment.
Yesterday was a lot.
The strangest part, perhaps, is how easily I have been here. Ella fed me because I needed feeding. Austin let me help cook because he understood I needed something useful to do with my hands. The house opened around me as if making room was the simplest thing in the world, and that should have made me feel like a guest.
Instead, it made me feel dangerously close to something else.
And Joshua-
My stomach turns over once, softly enoug
