🌙⭐️Before The Break⭐️🌙
Eve woke before the sun, as always.
She lay still in the grey dawn, staring at the peeling paint curling above her like tired petals. For a moment, she allowed herself to simply breathe, to feel the quiet pressing down around her. It was a fragile quiet, the kind that could shatter with the smallest movement, spilling chaos across the house.
Her phone buzzed against her pillow. 5:07am.
Too early to be alive. Too late to go back to sleep.
She slipped out of bed, careful to avoid the two floorboards near her dresser that shrieked like startled birds. Her faded denim jacket waited on the back of her chair, sleeves wrinkled, cuffs frayed. She pulled it on over her thin grey t-shirt and tied her dark brown hair into a messy bun with the blue hair tie Daisy liked. "It makes you look like a teacher," her little sister always said, beaming, as though being a teacher was the highest honour imaginable.
Eve checked her phone again, thumb hovering over her notifications. Bank alert. School email reminders. And there, tucked among them like a secret she wasn't ready to face:
"Congratulations on your conditional offer to-"
She locked the screen before reading further. Not today. Not now. Not when bills lay unpaid and her sisters needed clean uniforms and the fridge hummed emptily in the kitchen.
The house was cold and dim as she crept downstairs. She flicked on the kitchen light, its tired bulb buzzing to life. Yellow light spilled across the cluttered counters: unopened, official-looking envelopes stacked beneath a cracked mug, Ruby's grocery list scribbled in looping bubble letters, Scarlett's lipstick rolling dangerously close to the edge. Eve caught it before it fell, placing it safely back in the makeup basket. Scarlett would accuse her of touching her stuff, but at least Daisy wouldn't end up painting her cereal pink.
She switched on the kettle. Steam curled into the shadows. In fifteen minutes she would wake Daisy and make her cereal with too much sugar, find Ruby's missing trainers, check Lila's sketchbook was packed, and knock on Scarlett's door until she decided whether school was worth the effort today.
Sometimes Eve wondered if they even saw her as their sister anymore, or just the half-grown stand-in parent who forgot how to be seventeen.
A cough broke the silence. Eve turned, startled, to see her mother in the doorway. Her floral dressing gown hung loosely from her shoulders, hair flattened on one side from sleep. She looked pale, the dark crescents beneath her eyes stark in the kitchen light. Her hands trembled as she reached for her favourite mug - the one with faded sunflowers and a hairline crack down its side.
"Mum?" Eve's voice was sharper than she intended. The kettle clicked off behind her, punctuating the question. "Sit down. I'll make it."
"I'm fine, Evie." Her mother tried to smile, but her lips barely moved. Her voice sounded thin and breathless.
Eve poured the hot water over coffee granules, watching them swirl into brown clouds. A tightness spread across her chest, a heaviness she couldn't explain. Something felt wrong. Heavier than exhaustion. Thicker than worry.
"Mum, please-"
Before she could finish, her mother swayed. The mug slipped from her grasp and smashed against the linoleum. Coffee splattered across the floor and onto Eve's socks as she lunged forward, catching her mother's narrow shoulders just before her knees buckled.
"Mum!" The word tore from her throat, ragged and desperate.
"I'm... okay..." her mother whispered, eyes fluttering open but unfocused.
Eve held her upright, heart hammering so hard it hurt. Her mother's body felt frighteningly light in her arms. Kneeling there on the cold kitchen floor, coffee seeping around them, Eve realised the truth she'd been trying not to see.
Today wouldn't be like every other day.
Today, the quiet cracks in their lives were about to split wide open.
