February returned with the same committed cold as the year before.
But it felt different this time.
Not the February of the first year — the month of first coffees and careful distance and the slow accumulation of something unnamed. This was the February of the second year. Known territory. The cold the same but the person walking through it alongside you changed everything about how it felt.
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The thesis was at seventy-eight pages of the formal document.
Holt had reviewed the garden section and returned it with a single margin note at the end.
*This is the thesis.*
Three words. Holt's version of everything.
I showed Prisca.
She read it.
"Same as Webb," she said. "Same as Voss." She handed it back. "The people who know keep saying the same thing."
"What thing?"
"That you've f
