Third Person POV
The ceiling had not changed in the last hour. Helen had been staring at it long enough to know every crack, every shadow, every small dip in the wood where the grain had split and never fully closed.
She could have drawn it from memory at this point. Could have described it to a stranger in enough detail that they would have been able to picture it exactly, every imperfection, every place where the wood had darkened with age and never lightened again.
None of it had moved. None of it had anything useful to offer her.
She kept staring anyway.
Because the alternative was closing her eyes, and the alternative to that was thinking, and thinking was the one thing she had been avoiding since yesterday. Since Sonita left. No note. No goodbye. Just disappeared.
