In the same moment I read her last words, the MacBook shuts down. The fire has gone out inexplicably, and the logs are still intact, only flame-licked on one side. I am shaking so hard that my fingers fumble with the matches, lighting one after another, then dropping them to the floor where they extinguish. My fingertips are still raw and sore from last night’s crawl through the snowdrifts to the cabin, but after several attempts I finally manage to relight the fire. In less than twenty-four hours my life has been left in ruins. I try to think but now it is as though my entire brain has gone blank, not just the parts I lost after Carúpano.

Eirik has betrayed me. He’s come here with her before, how else would he have known how to silence the refrigerator or gotten past the barrier? They’ve all betrayed me: Elisabeth, my mother, everyone I love. And now, Leah is dead. Elisabeth is dead. Thank God.

I’m still alive and Eirik is still alive and Leah and Elisabeth are both dead. If I could find a way to let it all go, if I can lock all this away somewhere inside me, I can still have everything. My home and my work and my family and my calm, controlled mind. My husband. But do I still want him? I just didn’t see it coming, that I’d love him. Leah didn’t have the faintest concept of love. And just because she thought she loved him, it sure as hell doesn’t mean he loved her. So he bought her a few drinks, he fucked her, maybe he came here with her for a faux-romantic weekend to fuck her some more, but Eirik loves me. That much I know. And I don’t know any of the rest of it; it’s all speculation, I don’t ever have to know. I can live with blank patches.

I want to throw the MacBook into the leaping flames, destroying Leah’s insane words. What I would give to never have come here, to never have read her words. To not have found her dead. She would just remain where she is until nothing would remain of her at all.