Erin slept badly.
She slept in the way mothers of small babies sleep — in shallow, snatched fragments, surfacing at every snuffle, every shift of the small body in the cradle by the bed. But under the usual broken rhythm of it was something else, something older and meaner, the kind of not-sleeping that came of having too many things inside her chest and no room in the night to lay them out.
She got up before the dawn was properly up.
She moved by feel through her own kitchen in the gray-blue almost-light. She put the kettle on. She took it off again before it could whistle. She stood for a long minute at the sink with both hands braced on the cool porcelain, head bowed, breathing.
By the time the sun came over the rooftops opposite, Erin had washed her face, twisted her hair back into
