The sunlight seeped slowly through the thin curtains in the living room, warm and honey-colored, brushing softly against my face as I stepped out of the hallway. The house still carried that gentle hush of early morning, the quiet that exists right before the day fully wakes. Coffee. I needed coffee. And maybe the routine of it would steady the flutter inside my chest that had been restless ever since last night.

I moved through the kitchen with the kind of familiar ease that comes with ...