Chapter 33
Steph’s regret about staying up reading half the night started when her phone chirped early the next morning. It didn’t really kick in until much later.
The first few notifications didn’t quite make it through into her consciousness, lodging themselves instead in uneasy half-dreams. By the time she dragged herself into bleary awareness at half past nine, she had seventeen unread messages.
Only the habit of years of insisting on at least getting coffee before she dove into the day kept her from reading all of them at once.
By the time she staggered into the kitchen—wrapped in an old purple robe that dragged the floor and with hair still tangled and bunched up from sleep—the total jumped to twenty-three.
In an annoying contrast to how she felt, both of her parents were fully
