Ella had started setting an alarm for 6:45 a.m. every day, even though she rarely needed it. The sound gave her something to do with her hands first thing in the morning, reach over, swipe the screen, silence the soft piano notes before they could wake the apartment. She liked the small control of it.
After the alarm, she lay still for exactly three minutes, eyes closed, breathing through her nose, counting each inhale and exhale like someone had once told her it would calm her nervous system. It didn’t, not really. But the counting filled the silence long enough for her to swing her legs out of bed without screaming inside her head.
She made coffee in the dark, one mug, always one. The second mug stayed upside down in the cabinet now she’d turned it over one morning and never turned it
