The Weight of Quiet
Jaes woke the way he always did now — not with a start, but with a slow unclenching, like a fist opening one knuckle at a time. His eyes found the ceiling first. Water stains bloomed there in shapes he'd memorized over three years: a rabbit, a crooked star, something that might have been a hand reaching for the light fixture that hadn't worked since the second month. He lay still and listened before he let himself move. That was rule one, the one he never spoke aloud because Zara already knew it by heart. *Listen before you breathe.*
The house ticked and settled around him, old wood easing into the cold. No shuffle-drag against the boards. No wet, rattling breath pressing through the gaps where the plywood didn't quite meet the window frame. Just wind, combing through the skeleton trees out past the Hendersons' collapsed fence, and somewhere far off, a sound like a door swinging on a hinge that had long since stopped caring whether it closed.
He sat up on the mattress they'd dragged down from the master bedroom, careful not to wake Zara, who was curled against his side like she still did every night despite being eight now, despite insisting she was *too old* for it in the loud,…