Claire's POV
November arrived without asking.
One morning the October gold was simply gone — replaced overnight by the specific grey of a Paris that had decided the warm period was finished and was moving on without sentiment. The trees on the street outside stripped back. The light different. The city settling into the longer version of itself that lasted until March and had its own particular beauty if you knew how to look for it.
I had learned to look for it.
This was Theo's doing, mostly. He had discovered fallen leaves with the focused intensity he brought to all natural phenomena and had spent the first three days of November conducting what he described as a collection operation — specific leaves, selected on criteria I couldn't fully decode, stored in a box he had found in the
