Chapter 1 - The Arithmetic of Survival
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At 5:45 in the morning, the third-floor apartment on Southridge Avenue was still dark, and Brier Holloway was already awake.
She always woke before the alarm. Six years had taught her body the arithmetic: five more minutes of sleep meant five fewer minutes to get Posie ready, and five fewer minutes meant missing the bus, and missing the bus meant being late for the morning shift, and being late for the morning shift meant losing the job. The chain left no room for anything softer than getting up.
She sat on the edge of the bed with her feet on the cold floor. The first thing she heard wasn't the city outside. It was breathing—heavy, slow, steady, the kind of breathing that had immense weight. Brutus lay stretched across the floor between Posie's doorway and the hallway, in the exact place he had slept every night for four years. He never needed to be told.
When Brier stepped past him, he didn't move, but his ears turned, tracking her through the dark by the sound of a creature who had memorized every noise this tiny, fragile apartment could make.
The kitchen light flickered twice before it held. It was a dying bulb, second month running, and there was still no money in the envelope marked for hardware.
In the refrigerator, everything was arranged with the brutal precision of a woman constantly counting dollars. There was enough milk for exactly four days. Six eggs. Cheese already sliced into perfectly even portions for Posie's breakfast for the rest of the week. Nothing extra. Nothing missing.
She made coffee from the cheapest brand on the shelf. Posie had never once complained about the smell of it, because to Posie, that cheap, bitter smell was morning. It was the smell of her mother still being here, still fighting, still anchoring their world.
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Posie was awake when Brier came into the bedroom. She was six years old, with messy brown hair and unseeing gray-blue eyes like her mother's. She lay staring at the ceiling with the solemn, quiet face of a child working through something terribly serious.
Brutus had already risen. Silent as a shadow despite his massive size, he walked to the corner of the room. He lowered his heavy, scarred head and pushed the folded wheelchair away from the cracked wall until it sat flush against the edge of the bed. No one had taught him that trick. No one had trained him. He had simply lived beside a particular kind of pain long enough to work out exactly what needed doing.
