Breakfast at Eight
At 4:58 a.m., my sister pounded on my bedroom door and demanded breakfast.
Four minutes later, she was standing in my kitchen wearing my eight-hundred-dollar silk robe.
And before the sun came up, she would find out that I had arranged a surprise of my own.
“Coffee! Eggs! Toast!” Melissa shouted through the bedroom door. Three hard knocks with each word. “And make enough for everyone!”
I was sitting on the edge of my bed.
Fully dressed. Jeans. A gray sweater. My hair pulled back. My shoes already on.
I was staring at a pale strip of moonlight lying across the hardwood floor. Listening to the ocean through the window. Listening to my sister’s fist on my door.
Six hours earlier, my family had arrived at my beach house without warning.
Now my sister was treating me like a hotel employee.
“Breakfast is at eight,” I answered.
Melissa gave a sharp, irritated laugh through the door.
“We have children, Morgan. We’re up early. Don’t be difficult.”
There it was.
Don’t be difficult.
The same sentence I’d heard in a hundred different forms since I was six years old.
Don’t be difficult.
Don’t embarrass your father.
Your sister needs you.
It’s easier if you just give her what she wants.
For most of my life, I’d obeyed.
Not anymore.
My name is Morgan Reese. I’m thirty-eight years old.
My house stands on an isolated stretch of the North Carolina coast. South of Corolla on the Outer Banks. At the end of a sand road where the pavement gives up. Surrounded by sea grass and pale dunes and nothing else for half a mile in either direction. In front of it, the Atlantic. Gray-green and endless.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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