She didn't sleep until nearly three.
When she did, it was the kind of sleep that felt more like waiting — shallow and fractured, her mind cycling through the evening in broken loops.
The static on the call. Leo's face going white. The name spoken carefully in her kitchen, and the particular way he'd said it, like something being opened under controlled conditions, slowly, so the damage could be assessed as it occurred.
She woke at six to Liam standing beside the bed in his dinosaur pajamas, Captain Zero in one hand and a slightly cold piece of toast in the other, his hair doing three different things at once.
"I made breakfast," he said.
She sat up. "You made toast?"
"The toaster made it. I pressed the button and waited." He held it out to her with the solemnity of someone offering s
