Chapter 6
Sophie slept peacefully in the next room, her breathing soft and even. She had stayed up late last night holding my hand, telling me stories about her life here in Alaska, trying to fill the silence with anything but goodbye.
I slipped out of bed quietly, my bones screaming in protest. Everything hurt now. Even breathing felt like lifting weights. But today, the pain felt different. Temporary.
Rocky lifted his head when he saw me moving around the kitchen. His golden eyes were knowing—dogs understand endings better than humans do.
"Stay here, boy," I whispered, kneeling beside him. "Sophie's going to need you."
I kissed his forehead, breathing in that warm puppy smell one last time. He licked my hand but didn't try to follow when I headed for the door. Good boy. He had learned his lesson yesterday.
The letter I wrote last night sat on the kitchen table like a small bomb. Sophie would find it in a few hours. By then, it would be too late for rescue missions or desperate phone calls to hospitals.
By then, I'd finally be free.
The old mare stood patiently as I saddled her with trembling fingers. I could barely lift the leather, but somehow I managed. Adrenaline, maybe. Or pure determination.
"Easy, girl," I murmured as I pulled myself onto her back. "Just one more ride."
The path to Glacier Lake wound through pine trees heavy with snow. Each step the mare took sent jolts of agony through my deteriorating spine, but I held on. The lake was only two miles away. I could survive two more miles of anything.
The sun climbed higher, painting the snow-covered landscape in shades of gold and rose. It was beautiful here. Peaceful. Wild. Honest.
Like the ending I was choosing.
When we reached the lake, I slid down from the mare's back and tied her reins to a low branch. She would find her way home eventually, or Sophie would come looking.
The water stretched out before me, dark as midnight and perfectly still. It reflected the fading aurora borealis like a mirror, green ribbons of light dancing across the surface.
They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.
Mine did. But not the way they say.
I didn't see my first steps, or first words, or birthday parties. I saw the moments I disappeared. Mom brushing past me to hug Sienna at my high school graduation. Ryan giving away the necklace I'd saved up to buy him for Christmas—"Sienna liked it better." Ethan looking at her with the same wonder he used to save for me.
I saw every time I made myself smaller, hoping someone would notice I was fading.
Nobody did.
So here I was. At the edge of the world, where the water was so cold it stopped time.
I wasn't sad anymore. I was just tired. So incredibly tired.
And the Northern Lights—God, they were still beautiful even in the daylight, pale green ghosts against the morning sky. This was how I wanted to be remembered. Not as the girl who gave everything away. But as the girl who took back her ending.
I walked to the water's edge. The first step took me knee-deep into liquid ice.
The cold hit like a physical blow, stealing my breath. But I smiled. Actually smiled.
"This is mine," I whispered to the empty air.
The second step brought the water to my waist. I was shaking now, but not just from the cold. I was remembering the night Ethan proposed, how he got down on one knee in his parents' garden and asked, "Will you marry me?"
I said yes. But I should have asked: "Will you choose me? When it matters? When it's hard? Will you still choose me?"
Now I knew the answer.
The third step brought the water to my chest. Breathing became difficult, my lungs seizing in the cold. I thought about waking up after surgery, alone in that sterile hospital room. No flowers. No visitors. Just me and the machines beeping out my recovery.
At least the lake was honest. It didn't pretend to love me while planning to leave.
The fourth step brought the water to my neck. My vision blurred—the cancer, or the cold, or maybe just acceptance. The last thing I saw clearly was that ribbon of green light dancing across the sky.
"Hello, Dad," I whispered. "I'm coming home."
The water closed over my head with shocking suddenness. It filled my nose, my ears, my mouth. It tasted like metal and winter and endings.
I didn't fight it. I let myself sink.
The cold stopped hurting. The cancer stopped eating. The loneliness stopped echoing.
Finally. Peace.
Above me, distorted by water and distance, the aurora borealis continued its ancient dance. The light fractured and bent, becoming something magical. Something perfect.
My last thought wasn't of them—the family who forgot to love me, the man who chose someone else. My last thought was of light. Pure, honest light that asked nothing and gave everything.
And then there was nothing at all.
Sophie's POV
I woke up to silence.
Not the peaceful silence of morning, but the hollow kind that meant something was wrong. Emma's covers thrown back like she had left in a hurry.
The letter on the kitchen table stopped my heart.
My hands shook as I read her goodbye, Rocky whining at my feet like he already knew. The old mare was gone from the paddock. I knew where she went. I knew what she had done.
I drove like a madwoman through the snow, Rocky's head out the window, both of us calling her name into the wilderness. When I reached the lake, the mare was tied to a tree, reins trailing in the snow.
The water was perfectly calm. Mirror-still. Empty.
"EMMA!" The scream tore from my throat, echoing off the mountains. "EMMA!"
But I knew she couldn't hear me anymore.
Rocky whimpered and pressed against my legs, and I sank to my knees in the snow, pulling him close. We stayed there until the cold numbed everything except the grief.
The letter fluttered from my hands, Emma's careful handwriting already blurring in the wind.
I thought about her family. How they would react when they found out what they had done. How they would try to make this about their loss instead of her choice.
Emma had asked me not to let them rewrite her ending.
I wouldn't.
It was time they learned what their love really cost.
Time for me to go home and tell them exactly what they had lost.
