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Gaia didn't wake up on Monday morning. It was impossible when she had never slept in the first place, tossing and turning all night as her mind had churned over everything she had learnt the night before. Those two pages of the newspaper weighed heavily on her mind and when she had found herself awake and alone, everyone else in the house sleeping soundly, her only solace had been the dim screen of her phone as she lay curled on her side with her back to Evan.
Seconds had ticked into minutes, the minutes growing into hours as she had scrolled through page after page of articles on the internet until she knew every single detail it was possible to know about the Sinclair-Stein family. She had seen every picture the internet had of Max, of the girl who called herself Max, and she had seen photo after photo of the most horrific injuries.
There were still hundreds of articles dating way back to the day of the fire, every local and national paper documenting what had at first been called a horrific tragedy. Some showed images of the enormous house ablaze, firefighters battling the flames that had taken over the entire building; later papers displayed photographs of the burnt, blackened building alongside pictures of the five who had died and the one who had killed them.
Sela was an unlikely survivor. A scrawny ten-year-old, she should have been the first victim of the night of horror, but she was the only one who had made it out alive. Her three siblings, all teenagers, had perished. Her mother, a cherished teacher at the same school Sela attended, had never woken up after she had gone to bed that night. Every single article marvelled at the girl's survival, questioning how she had defied death when it had spent month knocking at her door.
Gaia had read every word, borrowing Evan's reading glasses when the font had begun to blur before her eyes. At one point she had crept downstairs with silent feet padding on the carpet to make herself a cup of tea, and she had curled up in a ball in an armchair with her phone plugged in to charge as she fed her addiction. She had cried when she had first realised, but now all she felt was a kind of numb shock. It didn't feel real yet, as though she was dreaming about an awful alternate reality.
At six o'clock, her tired ears picked up on the sound of Clover beginning to fuss, her first quiet cries rustling through the baby monitor, and it was only then that the time registered with Gaia. She and Evan had ended up in bed at ten o'clock and after they had spent an hour reading, he had turned off the light and kissed her goodnight, and she had nestled against him. But once he had fallen asleep and she had failed to drift off, her attention had wavered.
Gaia peeled herself away from her bed, her body laden with exhaustion and she dragged herself through to her daughter's room, sleepily shushing her as she bet over the side of the cot and scooped her up. Rocking her from side to side as she slipped the loose strap of her top off her shoulder and cradled the baby against her chest.
She dropped back onto the bed with a sigh, leaning back against the headboard, and the sudden dip of the mattress roused Evan. He rolled over in the semi-light, squinting at his wife as he screwed up his face in a yawn. He scanned her pale cheeks and her dull eyes, underscored with dark bags that told the story of her night.
