Chapter One
A Perfectly Normal Tuesday
The morning the world began to change, I was running late for work because Hazel had decided that the patch of grass outside our apartment building was the most fascinating place on Earth.
He had been standing there for nearly five minutes, nose buried in the damp grass, his broad body planted firmly against the lead as though the fate of the universe depended on whatever scent he had discovered. I had already checked my phone twice, calculated how much time I had left before I would have to explain my lateness to the clinic, and considered whether dragging a thirty-kilogram American Staffordshire Terrier across the pavement was worth the argument it would inevitably cause.
Hazel, naturally, had other priorities.
“Come on, you enormous idiot,” I told him, giving the lead a gentle tug. “Some of us have to work for a living.”
He looked back at me with his soft, utterly unrepentant eyes. His ears shifted, his tail gave one lazy thump, and then he returned to his investigation.
I sighed. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
That was the thing about Hazel. He could ruin my schedule, steal my place on the sofa, cover my clothes in short, stubborn hairs and stare at me while I ate as though I had personally invented hunger and then refused to share the solution. Somehow, I loved him more for all of it. He was not a pet in the way people used the word when they wanted to make an animal sound like an accessory. He was my family. The closest thing I had to one.
My parents had died when I was fifteen. The details of that loss had become part of the architecture of my life: invisible most days, impossible to remove, and capable of changing the shape of everything when I least expected it. I had learned to live without them. I had learned to make decisions without asking what they thought, to celebrate things without hearing their voices, and to come home to an empty apartment without expecting anyone to ask how my day had been.
Eventually, I had built a life that was mine. A job, a home, a few people I trusted, and a dog who greeted me as if I had returned from a year-long expedition every time I walked through the front door.
There were mornings when getting through the day felt less like living and more like moving a list of tasks from one column to another. I still went to work, answered messages, paid bills and remembered to buy dog food. From the outside, that probably looked like coping. Most days, I let it count. It was easier than examining why a perfectly ordinary Tuesday could sometimes feel as though I had already spent all my energy before it began.
It wasn’t a grand life, but it was a good one.
Most days, that was enough.
“Hazel.”
This time I used the voice that meant I was finished negotiating. He finally lifted his head, apparently deciding that the grass would continue to exist without his supervision, and allowed me to lead him back towards the building. I crouched to wipe a small piece of mud from his paw before we went inside. He immediately tried to lick my face.
“Absolutely not. I have standards.”
He licked my chin.
“Clearly, you don’t.”
By the time I had cleaned his paws, filled his water bowl and checked that he had everything he needed for the morning, I had lost another seven minutes. I grabbed my bag, kissed the top of his head, and hurried out, promising him I would be back before he had time to stage a formal complaint with the neighbours.
Outside, Gliwice was waking up beneath a low ceiling of grey clouds. The pavement still held the dampness of the night, and the air smelled of wet concrete, car exhaust and the first coffee of the day escaping from a nearby café whenever someone opened its door. Cars moved through the streets with the usual impatience. A cyclist swore at a delivery van. Somewhere across the road, a child was refusing to put on a jacket while a visibly exhausted parent attempted to reason with the unreasonable.
Ordinary life, in all its irritating detail.
I liked it that way.
I had never wanted to be extraordinary. I wasn’t secretly waiting for someone to discover that I possessed a forgotten talent, an ancient inheritance or some special purpose hidden beneath the surface of my existence. I was a physiotherapist. My days involved helping people recover movement, explaining exercises they would forget to do at home, and trying to persuade patients that pain did not always mean they were damaging themselves.
I understood bodies. Muscles, joints, nerves, the complicated ways people compensated for old injuries without realising they were doing it. I knew how fear could make a person tense before they even moved, and how patience could accomplish what force never would.
The world was complicated enough without adding magic to it.
At the time, I considered that a reasonable position.
By the time I reached the clinic, the clouds had begun to thin, allowing narrow bands of sunlight to fall across the entrance. I was seven minutes late. I knew this because I checked the clock on the reception desk before saying good morning to the receptionist, who responded with the kind of distracted smile that suggested she had already dealt with three complaints and a broken coffee machine.
I changed into my work clothes, tied my hair back and collected my notes for the morning appointments. The familiar routine settled around me almost immediately. The treatment rooms smelled of disinfectant and laundry detergent, and the corridors carried the usual mixture of footsteps, quiet conversations and the occasional groan of someone who had discovered that the stairs were less forgiving than they remembered. Somewhere in the staff room, a coffee machine was making a noise that suggested it had reached the end of its useful life.
I was halfway through my first coffee when I found Steve waiting outside my treatment room.
He was sixty-five, stubborn, and possessed of an almost supernatural ability to complain about any exercise that required him to move. His knee had been giving him trouble for months, but you would have thought I had personally designed the human body to inconvenience him.
“Good morning,” I said, opening the door.
“Morning.” He looked at the exercise mat inside. “Tell me you’ve reconsidered.”
“About what?”
“The exercises.”
“Of course. I’ve spent the entire night thinking about them.”
He brightened. “And?”
“And I’ve decided we should make them harder.”
His expression fell into such profound disappointment that I almost felt guilty. Almost.
“You enjoy this far too much,” he muttered as he shuffled into the room.
“It’s one of the few pleasures left to me.”
I set my coffee on the counter and checked his notes. Steve had been attending physiotherapy for several weeks, and although he would never admit it, his mobility had improved. He could bend his knee more easily, his gait was less guarded, and he had stopped gripping the edge of the treatment table every time I asked him to stand on one leg. Progress was there, even if he preferred to regard every new exercise as a personal attack.
We spent the next twenty minutes working through his programme. I corrected his posture, adjusted the resistance, and reminded him twice that holding his breath would not somehow make his muscles work harder. He responded by informing me that his muscles had worked perfectly well for sixty-five years without my supervision.
“Your muscles have also spent the last six months making your knee worse,” I pointed out.
“Details.”
I laughed and reached for my notes.
Outside the window, the city was moving through an ordinary spring morning. A woman walked past with a paper bag tucked beneath her arm. A delivery van pulled up beside the building. The branches of the trees stirred in a light breeze, their new leaves still small and pale against the grey sky.
For a little while, I forgot about the time. There was something reassuring about the repetition of it all: the same room, the same patient, the same arguments, the same small victories that most people would never notice. I could spend an entire day helping someone recover a few degrees of movement, and although it might not change the world, it changed something for that person. I had always liked that about my work. You could see the results. Sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully, but they were real.
“Did you see the news this morning?” Steve asked as I adjusted the equipment.
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“I barely had time to get here. Hazel decided to conduct a full investigation of the grass outside my building.”
“Hazel?”
“My dog. He has a very demanding social life.”
Steve chuckled. “Well, apparently it’s going to get warmer this week. About time, if you ask me. I’m sick of wearing a jacket.”
“You’ll complain about the heat in two weeks.”
“Absolutely.”
“I knew it.”
He began another set of exercises, and I moved towards the counter to record his progress. The television mounted in the corner was still playing the morning programme, its presenters discussing the weather and an upcoming public holiday. I rarely paid attention to it. I had stopped watching the news regularly years ago, partly because there was always another tragedy to absorb and partly because I had never found that knowing about every terrible thing happening in the world made me any better equipped to deal with the ones directly in front of me.
Then the programme cut to a news bulletin.
The music changed first. A moment earlier, the presenters had been smiling about spring temperatures; now a serious-looking woman appeared on the screen, seated behind a desk with a map of the world displayed beside her. A red banner ran along the bottom of the image. I couldn’t read the smaller text from where I stood, but the words unusual seismic activity were clear enough.
Steve stopped moving.
I glanced at the screen. “What now?”
The news anchor began explaining that monitoring stations across several regions had recorded unusual movements beneath the Earth’s surface. Scientists were examining changes in tectonic activity that did not fit neatly into the usual patterns. The report mentioned multiple tectonic plates, several regions of the Pacific, parts of Asia and areas of Europe. Preliminary assessments were still underway, and officials were advising people to remain informed about local emergency guidance.
The map changed. Lines and highlighted areas appeared across the continents.
I set down my pen and reached for the remote.
“Turn that up,” Steve said.
“I was going to.”
The volume increased, filling the room with the anchor’s measured voice. She repeated that there was no immediate reason for the public to panic. Researchers were gathering data, and it was too early to determine whether the movements would develop into significant seismic events.
No immediate reason to panic. It was the sort of phrase that sounded sensible until someone had to say it on television.
I studied the map. The markings were spread too widely for me to make sense of them, although I knew enough about earthquakes to understand that the planet’s tectonic systems were interconnected. What bothered me was not simply the number of affected areas. It was the uncertainty in the anchor’s expression, the careful wording of the report, and the fact that nobody seemed willing to say what might happen next.
“Are they saying the whole world could have earthquakes?” Steve asked.
“They’re saying there has been unusual activity in a lot of places.”
“That’s not much better.”
“No. It isn’t.”
The anchor moved on to a statement from a seismologist. A graphic appeared, showing the boundaries of several tectonic plates and the locations of recent measurements. The expert spoke about anomalies, incomplete data and the need for caution. His words were technical, but even through the television I could hear the strain beneath his attempt to sound reassuring.
I tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Part of me wanted to dismiss the entire report as an overdramatic news segment. The media had a talent for turning uncertainty into a spectacle, and a map covered in red markings was certainly more effective at holding attention than a discussion of routine geological measurements.
Still, I found myself staring at the screen longer than I intended.
A low vibration passed through the floor.
It was so slight that I initially mistook it for the rumble of a heavy vehicle passing outside. The glass beside my coffee gave a faint, delicate rattle against the counter. I looked down at it, waiting for the vibration to stop.
It did.
Steve glanced at the floor, then at me. “Did you feel that?”
“Probably a truck.”
“There isn’t a road big enough for a truck to do that.”
“Then perhaps the building is trying to tell us something.”
He gave me a look. “Not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
I was already reaching for the counter when the second tremor came.
This time, the entire room shivered. The window frames clicked, the television image jumped, and the water in a half-empty bottle rippled visibly. A dull sound travelled through the walls, low enough to be felt in my chest as much as heard. For a heartbeat, neither Steve nor I moved.
Then the floor lurched beneath us.
“Under the table!” I shouted.
The room convulsed. Equipment rattled across metal trays, a cabinet door flew open, and something heavy struck the wall in the corridor outside. I dropped to the floor beside the treatment table, reaching for Steve as he struggled to get down. The table shifted several centimetres across the room. A sharp crack sounded overhead, followed by a shower of plaster that scattered over the mat.
I pulled Steve beneath the table and covered the back of his head with one arm as the building shook harder. The noise was enormous: windows rattling in their frames, furniture scraping across the floor, alarms starting somewhere beyond the door. A crash from the corridor was followed by a woman’s scream.
“Stay down!” I shouted, although I could barely hear my own voice.
The lights flickered and went out.
For several seconds, the world consisted of darkness, violent movement and the terrible certainty that I had no control over any of it. I held on to the table leg, my fingers aching around the metal, and tried to keep my head down. Every instinct told me to get up and run, but there was nowhere to run. The floor moved beneath us like the deck of a ship caught in a storm.
I thought of Hazel.
The thought arrived with such force that it nearly displaced everything else. He was at home, alone in the apartment. He would hear the walls creaking and the objects falling. He would feel the ground shaking beneath his paws and have no way to understand why. He would look for me, and I would not be there.
The thought was so unbearable that I forced myself to focus on the immediate danger. I could not help Hazel if I was buried beneath the building.
The shaking intensified once more. Something shattered close to my head, and Steve made a sound that I would remember for a long time: a short, frightened noise from a man who had spent weeks insisting that nothing could be worse than his knee.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the movement stopped.
I remained beneath the table, unable to trust the silence. Dust drifted through the dark. Somewhere in the corridor, an alarm continued to ring, and I could hear people calling to one another. My breathing sounded harsh and unfamiliar. I forced myself to count slowly, the way I sometimes instructed anxious patients to do when pain or fear made it difficult for them to think clearly.
One. Two. Three.
The emergency lights flickered on, bathing the room in a dim red glow.
Steve stared at me. His face had gone pale, and there was plaster dust in his hair. I checked him quickly, asking him to move his arms and legs and telling him not to stand until I was sure he could do so safely. He answered each question, although his voice shook.
“Are we going to die?” he asked.
I looked at the ceiling, where a fresh crack ran from one corner towards the light fixture.
“No,” I said. “Not today.”
It was an absurdly confident answer. I had no evidence to support it, and I knew that. But he needed something to hold on to, and I was not going to tell a frightened man that I had no idea what was happening.
A second tremor struck before either of us could move.
The room bucked violently. I was thrown sideways, my shoulder slamming against the wall hard enough to send pain down my arm. The table scraped across the floor, and a cabinet toppled with a crash that sent bottles and medical supplies scattering in every direction. Ceiling tiles broke loose overhead. I heard glass shatter in the corridor and another scream, closer this time.
I curled around my head, protecting it with my arms, and waited for the building to stop moving.
When the shaking finally weakened, I could hear the emergency alarms more clearly. Voices echoed through the clinic, overlapping in a confusion of frightened questions and shouted instructions. Someone was calling for a nurse. Someone else was crying. From outside came the distant, continuous wail of sirens.
I pushed myself upright, wincing as my shoulder protested. Steve was still beside me, shaken but conscious. I checked his limbs, helped him sit up and made sure he could stand without losing his balance. His knee, for once, seemed to be the least of his problems.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“Good. Slowly. Hold on to me if you need to.”
I guided him towards the door, stepping around broken equipment and fallen plaster. The corridor was a mess. A section of ceiling had collapsed near reception, exposing a tangle of wires and metal supports. One of the windows had cracked from corner to corner, and a fire extinguisher lay on its side beneath a desk. Staff members were helping patients away from damaged areas while others checked the rooms for anyone who might be injured or trapped.
The building had not collapsed, but it no longer felt like a place I knew.
I helped Steve reach a safer area and made sure a colleague had taken over his care. Then I pulled out my phone.
The screen was filled with notifications. Messages from friends, emergency alerts, missed calls and news updates had accumulated in the minutes since the first tremor. Several people were asking whether everyone was safe. Others were sharing videos of buildings swaying and roads split open. One message from Gabriela asked if I was all right, followed by another demanding that I answer her immediately.
I sent her a quick reply, telling her I was alive and would call as soon as I could.
Then I called home.
The call failed before it could connect.
I tried again, holding the phone tighter as if that might somehow force the signal through. Nothing. I stared at the screen, pressed redial and listened to the same brief tone before the connection dropped.
Hazel was home alone.
The thought erased everything else. I could hear my colleague telling people to remain inside until the building had been assessed, and I understood why. There could be further aftershocks. Streets might be blocked, structures damaged, emergency services overwhelmed. Running into the city without knowing what was safe was not a sensible decision.
But Hazel did not know any of that. He would not understand why I had left him behind or why I was taking so long to come back.
“I have to go home,” I said.
My colleague turned towards me. “Wait. We don’t know whether the streets are safe.”
“My dog is there.”
“I understand, but there could be more shaking. You should stay with us until—”
“I can’t.”
I heard the sharpness in my own voice and knew I was being unfair. She was trying to help me. She was frightened, too. But I could not stand there while the phone remained silent, imagining Hazel trapped in a damaged apartment with no way out.
I collected my bag and coat from the treatment room, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. Then I headed for the exit.
Outside, Gliwice had become a city I barely recognised.
People crowded the pavements, some standing motionless and staring at the buildings around them, others running towards open spaces or shouting names into their phones. Car alarms screamed from several directions. Traffic lights were dark, and vehicles had been abandoned at awkward angles in the intersections. A bus stood across part of the road, its passengers gathered beside it while the driver tried to contact someone on his radio.
Dust hung in the air. Somewhere nearby, a woman was crying so hard that she could barely speak. A man in a business suit knelt beside an elderly person on the pavement, asking repeatedly whether they could hear him.
I wanted to stop. Every instinct I had as a physiotherapist told me to check for injuries, to help where I could, to make sure nobody was left lying on the ground without assistance.
But my phone had no signal, and Hazel was alone.
I hated myself for continuing to walk.
Then I began to run.
The route home was familiar enough that I could have travelled it with my eyes closed on an ordinary morning. I knew which streets were busiest, where the pavements narrowed, and which crossings took too long to change. Now every familiar landmark had become a potential hazard. People moved unpredictably, debris blocked sections of pavement, and the sound of sirens seemed to come from everywhere at once.
I kept my eyes on the road ahead, looking for a clear path between the buildings. My lungs began to burn, and my shoulder throbbed with every movement. I ignored both. All I could think about was the apartment, the door, the sound of Hazel’s paws on the floor when he heard me come home.
Another rumble travelled beneath the street.
I slowed instinctively, looking around. The vibration grew stronger, rising through the pavement until I could feel it in my knees. People stopped where they stood. A cyclist put one foot down and stared at the buildings lining the road.
Then the facades began to sway.
It was a movement so wrong that my mind initially refused to interpret it. The upper floors shifted against the skyline, windows flashing as sunlight caught their glass. A deep groan rolled through the street, followed by the sharp, irregular cracking of masonry. Someone screamed for everyone to move away from the walls.
A shower of glass fell from a building ahead of me, striking the pavement with a sound like breaking ice. I stumbled backwards, raising an arm to protect my face. People scattered into the open space of the road, shouting and pushing past one another.
The ground buckled beneath my shoes. I almost lost my balance completely. I caught the edge of a street sign, my fingers closing around cold metal as the pavement trembled. A crack appeared across the road, narrow at first, then widening enough to expose the dark layer beneath the asphalt. It did not stretch very far, and I could not see what lay below it, but the sight was enough to send a fresh wave of fear through the crowd.
The shaking eased.
I released the sign and kept moving.
I had never been particularly athletic. I could demonstrate exercises, assess movement and explain exactly why a patient should strengthen their legs, but none of that had prepared me to sprint through a city that seemed determined to dismantle itself. By the time I reached the next intersection, my breathing was ragged, and sweat had gathered beneath my hairline.
I looked at my phone again.
No signal.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Come on, you useless piece of—”
The screen remained stubbornly blank of any useful connection.
I shoved it into my pocket and ran on.
The streets grew harder to navigate as I approached my neighbourhood. A section of pavement had collapsed beside a parked car, and people were climbing over broken masonry to reach the other side. I had to change direction twice, once because a crowd had blocked the road and again because a building’s damaged facade was shedding pieces of plaster and brick.
An aftershock passed beneath the city, smaller than the earlier tremors but strong enough to send people stumbling. I stopped beside a low wall and waited until the movement faded. Across the street, a man clutched a child against his chest while another person tried to pull open the door of a car trapped beneath fallen debris.
I wanted to help. I wanted to do something useful, anything that might make the situation less terrible.
Instead, I stood there for three seconds, fighting the knowledge that every moment I spent away from Hazel was another moment I could not get back.
Then I continued.
By the time I reached my street, my lungs felt raw, and my legs had begun to shake with exhaustion. The neighbourhood was quieter than the main roads, but the damage was unmistakable. A parked car had been crushed beneath a fallen section of masonry. Several windows were broken, and people stood outside their homes holding bags, coats and whatever belongings they had managed to grab. Some were crying. Others were trying to reach relatives by phone, repeating the same failed attempts I had made.
My building was still standing.
I stopped in the middle of the pavement and stared at it, searching for signs of structural damage. One window on the upper floors had shattered, and a piece of plaster lay near the entrance, but I could not see anything that suggested the building had suffered a major collapse.
It was not enough to reassure me. It was enough to make me move.
I took the stairs because the lift was out of service. Each step seemed longer than the last, and the pain in my shoulder sharpened whenever I reached for the railing. I stopped outside my apartment, fumbling with my keys because my hands would not stay still.
For one terrible moment, I could not get the key into the lock.
“Please,” I whispered, although I wasn’t sure whether I was speaking to the door, to Hazel or to God.
The lock finally turned.
I pushed the door open.
“Hazel?”
The apartment was quiet.
I stepped inside, my eyes moving over the familiar hallway, the shoes beside the wall, the coat hanging from its hook. Something had fallen in the living room, and I could see a scattering of broken ceramic on the floor. A framed photograph lay face down near the sofa.
“Hazel, baby?”
A scratching sound came from the bedroom.
I barely had time to turn before he appeared around the corner, his paws sliding against the floor as he rushed towards me. He was trembling, his ears pinned back, his eyes wide and fixed on my face. He pressed his body against my legs with such force that I stumbled backwards and dropped my bag.
I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around him.
“I’m here,” I whispered into his fur. “I’m here, baby. I’ve got you.”
Hazel pushed his face beneath my chin, whining and licking my cheek. His entire body shook against mine. I held him tighter, one hand moving over his back and sides as I checked for injuries. I could feel his heart racing beneath his coat, but I could not find any blood or obvious wounds. He was frightened, confused and alive.
That was enough.
I buried my face against his neck and allowed myself to cry. Not elegantly, not quietly, and certainly not in the controlled way I would have advised a patient to breathe through a difficult moment. My shoulders shook, and my throat hurt, and I clung to my dog as though the rest of the world might disappear if I loosened my grip.
For fifteen years, I had lived with the knowledge that the people I loved could be taken from me without warning. I had learned to carry that fear in ways that rarely showed. I went to work, paid my bills, made plans and pretended that being an adult meant I had somehow made peace with the unfairness of it all.
But when the ground began to move, all those carefully built defences had vanished. I had been reduced to one thought: get home to Hazel.
And now he was here.
I pressed a kiss to the top of his head and pulled back enough to look at him. His dark eyes searched my face, as if he needed to confirm that I was real. I rubbed his cheeks between my hands, checking his ears and muzzle, then held him close again when he tried to climb into my lap.
“You’re okay,” I told him. “We’re okay.”
I did not know whether either statement was true.
Outside, sirens continued to wail. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed, followed by hurried footsteps on the stairs. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out with one hand while keeping the other wrapped around Hazel.
The screen showed a message from Gabriela.
Answer me when you can. Please tell me you’re safe.
I typed a quick reply with shaking fingers.
I’m home. Hazel is okay. Are you safe?
The message refused to send.
I stared at the little symbol on the screen, then tried again. Nothing. I set the phone aside and looked around the apartment. A lamp had fallen near the sofa. Books lay scattered across the floor, and the framed photograph from the hallway had cracked along one edge. The walls appeared intact, but I could hear the occasional creak from somewhere above me.
I needed water. I needed to check the building. I needed to find out what had happened and whether anyone had been injured.
Instead, I remained on the floor with Hazel pressed against my chest, listening to his breathing and trying to slow my own.
After a while, I managed to stand. Hazel followed me immediately, keeping so close that I nearly tripped over him. I checked the rooms, filled his water bowl and collected the few things that had fallen from the shelves. I moved slowly, testing the floor beneath my feet whenever the building made an unfamiliar sound.
The apartment looked almost normal once I had picked up the broken pieces of ceramic and straightened the fallen lamp. That was the strange thing about disaster. It could tear the world apart and still leave a sofa standing where it had always stood, a mug on the kitchen counter, a pair of shoes beside the door. The ordinary objects seemed to have no idea that anything had changed.
I turned on the television, hoping for information. The screen remained black. I tried the internet on my phone, then the radio app, but nothing loaded. I checked the electricity, which was still working, and listened for any announcement from outside.
There was only the distant noise of the city.
I sat on the floor beside Hazel and drew him against my side. He rested his heavy head on my thigh, though his ears kept turning towards every sound. I ran my fingers through the short fur behind his neck, feeling the tension gradually leave his body.
“We’ll figure it out,” I murmured.
It was what I told patients when they were afraid of the work ahead of them. It was what I told myself when something went wrong and I had no immediate solution. Sometimes it was true. Sometimes it was simply the only useful thing to say.
I looked towards the window.
The sky had darkened, although the morning was not yet over. A thin veil of dust drifted between the buildings, softening their outlines. Far away, beyond the rooftops, a column of smoke rose into the clouds.
Then the windows began to rattle again.
Hazel lifted his head.
I went still, listening as a low vibration travelled through the apartment. It was not as violent as the earlier shaking, but it lasted longer than I expected. The glass trembled in its frame, and somewhere in the kitchen a spoon slid across the counter and struck the floor.
I put one hand on Hazel’s back.
“Easy,” I whispered.
The vibration faded.
For several seconds, neither of us moved. Then Hazel stood, turned towards the window and gave a low, uncertain growl.
I followed his gaze, but there was nothing outside except the damaged street, the distant smoke and the grey spring sky.
I told myself that the aftershocks would stop. I told myself that emergency services would restore order, that the buildings would be inspected, that the news would eventually explain what had happened. I told myself that the world had suffered a terrible earthquake and that, once the shaking ended, we would begin putting everything back together.
I had no idea how wrong I was.
I couldn’t have explained why Hazel was growling. I only knew that he had gone still in a way I rarely saw, and that the ordinary explanations I had been repeating to myself no longer felt quite as solid as they had a few minutes earlier.
Outside, the sirens continued, and I stayed beside him until he stopped growling.
