ELARA'S POV
Christmas morning I woke to the smell of my mother's kitchen already working.
Six-thirty. Earlier than she needed to start. She started early because she loved it, because the long morning of cooking was its own kind of Christmas for her, the hours of it as much the gift as the meal.
Damien was asleep.
I lay still and listened to the house. My mother moving in the kitchen, soft and unhurried. The particular creak of the third stair that had been there since I was seven. Outside the Tacoma morning, quiet in the specific way of Christmas, the world briefly paused.
I looked at him.
On his back, one arm across his stomach, breathing even. He'd been up later than me, he and my father finishing the chess game and then sitting in the living room for twenty minutes afterward that
