When I set that grief beside the alternative — beside the world in which I had not been on rotation, in which Jessi Vance had been buried as a medical misfortune and Luca had wept beautifully at her funeral and flown to his new life on her money — the grief is a price I would pay a thousand times.

I lost a friend who was never real.

I kept a friend who was.

That is not a hero’s story.

It is just the arithmetic of what happened, and I have made my peace with it, mostly, on the good days.

Chapter 20 — Finally, Truly Safe

Six months later, the afternoon sun streamed through the wide windows of Jessi’s new apartment, overlooking the Mississippi.

The room smelled of lilies and hot tea, and she sat in an armchair with a soft shawl over her shoulders, her voice fully recovered, her color bright, her posture easy in a way I had not seen in her in years.