She'd read it too many times already — Watch Michael — and the problem wasn't that it was specific enough to act on. It was that it was specific enough to make every ordinary thing feel like it might be the thing she should be watching. She put the phone down, picked it up again, read it a fourth time as if repetition might produce meaning the earlier three hadn't. It didn't.
She got ready for work slowly, with a new, deliberate attention to the small things — checking the lock when she left, a gesture she didn't usually make twice, hearing herself make it twice anyway and not stopping. The morning felt thinner than usual, the ordinary sounds of the street outside landing at a slightly higher register than they should have. She adjusted for it the same way she adjusted for everything else
