It had never occurred to me to keep the other ledger, the one with the people who were still here, still climbing, partly because on some ordinary terrible day someone had nodded at them.

Gabriel would have kept that ledger.

He’d have started it first.

I put his letter in a wooden box on my shelf, next to a photograph of Gabriel Torres grinning in a flight suit with his helmet under his arm, twenty-six years old and certain he’d live forever.

I know now that the past doesn’t disappear, and the losses don’t stop aching — not entirely, not ever.

Gabriel is still gone.