The towel slipped through Daniel Mercer’s fingers before he was ready to let go of it.
For a second, he thought the room had tilted.
It was not a dramatic movement. Nothing fell. Nothing shattered. The kitchen remained exactly as it had been a moment before: the old wooden table beneath his palms, the warm yellow light hanging above them, the faint smell of salt carried in through the open window, the steady rhythm of the ocean beyond the house.
