Rebecca’s POV
I slept.
That was the first thing that surprised me, that after everything, after the pavement and the restaurant and Olivia’s question and the two hours that followed it in which we talked about things I had not yet allowed myself to think about in practical terms, I came home and got into bed and slept. Properly. The full, uninterrupted sleep of someone who has set down a weight they had been carrying without acknowledging they were carrying it.
I had not slept like that in three months.
I woke at six-forty. The room was the particular grey of early morning, the light not yet decided about itself, the house holding its breath the way it did before the kitchen sounds started. Edmund’s side of the bed was empty, he had come in late and left early and I had registered n
