Morning filtered through the curtains in muted brushstrokes, painting shadows that seemed to pulse with remembered laughter. Rory's eyes traced the ceiling, mapping the familiar terrain of early wake-ups and shared jokes that now felt like artifacts from another life. The space beside her held Sunny's sleeping form, but the bed still felt vast, untethered—a geography rewritten by absence.
She slipped from beneath the covers, each movement careful and deliberate, a dance choreographed around the hollowness in her chest. The hardwood was cool beneath her feet, grounding her in sensation when everything else threatened to dissolve into memory.
Their morning routine had been simple: Sam would wake first, his internal clock precise as any surgeon's. The coffee maker would gurgle to life, its
