The morning arrived the way mornings did — without ceremony, without announcement, simply present when the household opened its eyes to it.
September light. The specific settled gold of it, exactly as promised, coming through the curtains of eight different rooms in the same house at the same hour on the same day that had been, for almost a year, the day on the horizon.
It was no longer on the horizon.
It was here.
The household dressed quietly.
Not silently — there were voices, the sounds of a house in motion, someone in the bathroom, someone in the kitchen making tea because the morning required something ordinary to hold onto. But underneath the ordinary sounds was a quality of attention, the specific hush of people doing familiar things with unusual care.
Nana plaited Hana's hair the way she always did, but slowly, with the particular tenderness of someone who understood that this ordinary thing was also not ordinary at all.
Hana sat still for it, which she didn't always.
