Chapter 16: Vera Reads the Journal Alone

The copy is in the lining of her winter coat.

She made it the way she makes everything that matters — quietly, without announcement, in the twenty minutes between Sable leaving and Callum's key in the lock. A photographer's eye for detail, three hundred years of practice, a pen that does not run dry. She sat at the kitchen table and transcribed every page in a hand that was already her hand, which was the strangest part — copying her own writing in her own writing, like standing between two mirrors and watching yourself recede.

She was not certain she would read it.