Olivia wakes before the alarm, before even the automatic shift in the building’s plumbing announces the city’s new day. The light is thin but determined, making its way through the window and mapping pale stripes across the edge of the comforter. She lies still, tracing the parallel bands as they cross over Adrian’s shoulder, his dark hair a sharp bracket against the white. He sleeps hard, cheek pressed into the pillow, one arm folded under, the other collapsed across his chest. It is a posture of total surrender.
She does not move. Not for a minute, not for several. She lets her hand slide up from the crease of her stomach to the notch in her clavicle, finds the locket there, and turns it once, twice, the way she does when she is thinking or when she is not supposed to be thinking at all
