The four-hundred-twelve-dollar utility bill would try to go through on the fifteenth, and the draft would bounce.

A slippered footstep sounded on the hallway floorboards at a quarter past seven.

Daniel came into the kitchen in his navy silk pajamas, his shoulders loose for the first time all week.

He looked down at my bare head in the morning light, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

He took a sheet of paper from his robe pocket and slid it across the table beside my coffee.

“We need whole milk, the ground espresso, and the English muffins Eleanor likes,” Daniel said.