The next morning, the milk in the carton sat noticeably lower in the fridge door than she remembered leaving it. Yelena frowned at it, then turned her attention to the bread bag sitting on the counter. Four slices were missing, and the twist-tie was refastened in a messy, crooked knot.
“I don’t tie it like that,” she murmured, a knot of unease tightening in her stomach. She stood in the kitchen in her socks, running through the previous night’s timeline. She hadn’t gotten up. She was sure of that, mostly. She’d gone to bed at eleven, slept through until her alarm, and hadn’t even visited the bathroom. But the carton didn’t lie, and neither did the missing bread.
“Am I sleep-eating now? Great,” she joked weakly to herself. She poured some cereal, ate it standing at the counter, and decided she’d simply lost count of her groceries. It was a small enough thing to let go—until that evening, when she opened the fridge and instinctively counted the remaining eggs, checking twice because she had already started to deeply doubt her own sanity.