REBECCA’S POV
I cracked the eggs one at a time into a bowl instead of directly into the pan because Edmund had once told me eggs cooked cleaner that way.
I had never stopped doing it.
Even now.
The kitchen held its ordinary sounds.
Butter meeting the pan.
The kettle ticking toward boiling.
A delivery truck idling somewhere down the block.
I did not feel the morning as separate from any other morning.
That was what I noticed.
I was not gathering myself before he came downstairs.
I was not rehearsing calm.
I was simply cooking eggs.
The calm underneath it was not a performance layered over something else.
It was the whole of what I felt.
Edmund came down at seven-ten.
Four minutes later than his usual pattern.
I noticed the four minutes.
I did not react.
“Morning,” I said.
