Chapter 29: Two Fronts
Tuesday arrived with the particular clarity that follows rain — the sky scrubbed clean, the streets of the Old District still damp but drying, the morning light sharp and unfiltered. April noticed these things on the subway ride to St. Jude's because she had learned, in the months since this all began, to pay attention to small beautiful things before the day had a chance to complicate them.
She had six hours of sleep behind her. Actual sleep, not the shallow fractured kind she had been surviving on for weeks. Her mother had made breakfast again — eggs and toast and the strong, slightly bitter coffee that April had grown up thinking was normal until she tasted the expensive variety at St. Jude's and realized there was a difference, and then decided she preferred her mother's anyway.
She walked through the golden gates with her chin up and her backpack on and the clean feeling of someone who had, for one morning, almost enough.
