He took my hand.

We stayed there until the lights returned, neither of us pretending the darkness had never been real.

PART 25

Paige decided to write a letter to herself at age thirty.

It was her idea, inspired by the archive project’s practice of preserving first-person accounts rather than allowing relatives to narrate everything afterward.

She filled several pages with what she knew and what she didn’t.

She described loving astronomy, failing a chemistry quiz, her favorite restaurant, and the strange comfort of learning that Rose had collected tiny paper flowers.