The next morning my body woke before the rest of me did.
Not fully. Not well. But with the old, humiliating instinct of trained muscle: count the joints, assess the damage, locate the axis, begin.
Hand first.
Still swollen. Still taped. Stiff with the kind of injury that makes the whole body reorganize itself around one wrong point.
Then shoulder.
Fine.
Throat.
Raw, but no longer from unsaid things.
By the time I sat up, the room was full of a pale early light and the house had already settled into its unnerving habit of functioning as if everyone inside it had been assigned a role before waking.
Helena came with coffee, breakfast, and the kind of practical calm that made collapse feel both possible and embarrassing.
"Mr. Vanderbilt asked that you work for one hour only this morn
