It did not make a plan.
It made a refusal.
A cold, sharp, terrifying thought took shape: If you won’t give me a roof, I’ll borrow one from the mountain.
Mr. Finch followed my gaze. A small cruel smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, like a man amused by a joke he wouldn’t share.
“Good luck with that,” he murmured, and walked away.
His boots crunched down the gravel path, each step a nail sealing my old life shut.
I stayed on that porch until his shape disappeared.
Until the cold seeped through my boots and into my bones.
Until the watching windows got bored and turned back to their dinners.
Then I looked up at the cliffs again and whispered to them, to the valley, to the memory of my parents.
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