Zane gave me the letter and left the room without being asked.
That was the first thing I noticed about him — he understood exits. He placed the sealed envelope in my hands, said *take whatever time you need,* and was gone before I could thank him, which felt deliberate. Like someone who had been waiting a long time to hand something over and had the discipline not to watch it received.
The envelope was old. Not antique-museum old, but the kind of aged that happens when something has been kept carefully rather than preserved artificially — handled, protected, carried close. My name was written on the front in handwriting I had never seen. Dark ink. Confident strokes. The letters were slightly uneven in the specific way of someone writing in a hurry, or writing under feeling.
I held it f
