The Beginning of the End

The night before everything unraveled, Mara couldn’t sleep.

She lay beside Alex, eyes fixed on the ceiling, counting the cracks like they were warnings she had missed. Eliana stirred in the baby monitor, but didn’t cry. Just shifted, as if even she could feel something shifting.

Mara’s chest ached, but there was no name for it.

Not yet.

Tomorrow she would forget how to breathe in a grocery store aisle. Tomorrow the noise would become too much. Tomorrow the silence would scream.

But tonight, there was only the ceiling.

And a woman on the edge of unraveling.