Natalie held the timeline.

And Natalie, unlike everyone else in my life, had never once believed I was fragile.

“You’re the least fragile person I’ve ever met,” she told me once, over bad Thai food.

“You just went quiet.

There’s a difference, and one day these people are going to learn it the hard way.”

Natalie mattered more than any document, and I understood that only in hindsight.

A scheme like the one closing around me depends, above everything, on isolation — on the target having no one left who remembers who she used to be.