Chapter 10: Carol at Midnight

The coffee went cold sometime around one-fifteen.

I noticed because I reached for it without looking, the way you do when a case has you properly, when the cup is just a prop your hands use to signal that you are still a person and not merely a mechanism of attention — and the cold hit my fingers first, then my tongue, and I set it back down on the corner of the desk and looked at it with the mild reproach you reserve for objects that have failed their basic obligations.

It was two-fourteen in the morning.