I did not show the second paper to anyone.
I read it eleven times in the grey afternoon light and then I put it in the coat, unfolded, beside the first one, and stitched the lining shut again.
She is closer than you think.
Six words. Same hand — the same plain upright letters that lean neither way, and I had spent a month looking at Sera’s writing in a request book, and it is not her hand. Sera’s is small and slanted and hooks at the descenders. This was drawn.
Which left me with two possibilities and no way to choose between them, exactly as before, and I was so tired of that particular arithmetic that I put it away and went to work.
Slowly, I told myself. Be slow.
I have never in my life wanted so much to run.
The summons came four days later, and it was not a summons.
“The Regen
