When I picked up the bag, I expected an envelope, or maybe a disc. What I found was a small glass vial with a cork stopper. It looked like a nineteenth-century Laudanum prescription. Or something that could be carried as an amulet.
I wound the paper tighter with a bent paper clip and tweezers and fished it out of the bottle. It was her EKG flatline.
I unrolled the tape and saw eighty-three years compressed into a thin black line. Sixty-three of those years were ours. It’s over.