The alarm did not ring — neither of them had set it. Aaron woke to the dark and the cold and the knowledge that the day had arrived, and he lay still for a moment, the way you lie still before a door you are about to open. Beside him, Sophie was already awake, already dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed with her shoes in her hands.
"It's not dawn yet," she said.
"It's close enough."
They moved through the house by the light of the kitchen, quiet out of respect for the hour, making coffee the way they made it on every other morning, as if that would keep the day ordinary. She had packed the night before. Her car waited by the door, clean from the afternoon she had given it, the trunk closed, the road coffee on the floor of the passenger seat.
On the counter, Aaron found the last two slices of Benjamin's pie, wrapped in foil. He set them on the seat beside the scarf she had bought at the market.
"Benjamin said not to let you eat it all on the road," he said.
