So the cup on that first morning in the new house was not really about tea.
It was about whether I was going to let what Mireille did become permanent, whether the fear was going to live in me for the rest of my life or whether I was going to take my mornings back.
I chose to take them back.
Not all at once — I still have mornings, years later, when I feel the old flicker.
But I make my own tea now, in my own kitchen, with water I boiled and a box I opened, and I drink it slowly and on purpose, and every cup is a small quiet act of refusing to let the past keep the mornings it tried to steal.
My daughter watches me sometimes.