Before we escaped in the boats, I visited my father one last time, in the library where he lay, dead, and where he later burned. I kissed him and slid his wedding ring off his finger. The ring’s on a chain around my neck, with my Darkwood key. When I graduate, I’ll give the key back. But I’ll never take off the ring.

Once the bombs detonated, Levi and I made it into a motorboat where we watched Pollux Island burn, the orange and yellow flames licking at a building that had once been beautiful. Ollie was safe, and Pru, and everyone else I loved, except Theodora. Her death split me apart. It was so unfair. So senseless. As we crossed the choppy water to our freedom and Levi took over the controls of the boat, my eyes became so heavy that I fell asleep on his shoulder.

Some of us went home, not to Darkwood but to our real houses. Pru and Pippa traveled with Jaeger to the farm. Tessa to her mother’s apartment. Ansel and Archer to the de Leons’. Ollie and, yes, Levi, to Booker and Jane’s. I hoped this would be Levi’s chance, finally, to make amends with his DNA family.

I insisted on flying back to San Francisco on my own. I needed to go through my father’s things. I needed time alone, to process. It had been him and me for so long; that’s how it had to be in the days following his death. Just me, with my memories of him. It’s painful accepting his last year with me wasn’t with me at all. My Duplicate had conversations with him I’ll never be privy to. I missed so much in a lifetime where he and I had so little. So little time, so little understanding. At night, I lie awake imagining what she might have said to him. Ollie tells me my father died in an act of love, to save Duplicate Levi, and his distance all those years stemmed from his deep-seated fear of losing me. I hold on to that like a lifeline. It’s all I have. My father’s memorial will be this summer. I need time to plan, to think about what I want to say in his eulogy. I’m not ready to officially say goodbye. Not yet.