VICTORIA POV
Month Forty-Nine
I chose a Sunday.
No particular reason. Sundays had always been quiet in the cabin. No errands. No obligations. Just the fire and the coffee and the mountains doing their indifferent thing outside the window.
Brighton was having a bad week. The medication made him tired. He moved more carefully now, the way people moved when their body had become something unreliable, something that required negotiation.
But that morning, he was up before me. Coffee already made. Sitting at the kitchen table with his hands wrapped around his mug, looking out at the mountains the way he always did.
Like he was trying to memorize them.
I stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment.
This was the last morning he would know me as Victoria.
I'd prepared. Not dramatically. Not with props or speeches or anything theatrical.
Just a folder. Sitting on the counter. Documents I'd printed at a library two towns over, paid cash, and worn a hat.
