It was because she had decided, the way she decided everything, quietly and without discussion, that her last job on this earth was to be the steady thing in my collapsing world — and that she would carry her own breaking privately so that I would have one solid surface left to stand on.

That is who she was.

That is who she had always been.

And it should not have surprised me at all, in the end, that a woman like that would spend her final strength not on rest, not on being comforted, but on twelve handwritten pages meant to make sure that when she was gone, I still would not be standing on that surface alone.

Chapter 3 — The Island