As long as she was asleep, everything was fine. She was dreaming of something good, something safe. If she could just hold onto it... But it was gone. She was awake. She opened her eyes and tried to guess how much time had passed. It was a game she played with herself. Three hours? Four hours? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had eight hours of solid sleep. Four hours, she decided, then looked at her watch. Off by half an hour. Hazel was still asleep, curled up facing the wall. Coffee and a cigarette — that’s what Rose would have. She didn’t like to smoke in front of her daughter. Long cigarette butts tossed onto the sidewalk or stuffed into public ashtrays made up her small stash of smokes. The ashtrays in front of hospitals and office towers were the best places to find these butts. She kept a few in a plastic bag, as a rare treat for when she was awake and Hazel was not. Rose reached for her sweater and pulled it on as she stepped out of the shack to build up the fire.
