Page 128 of True Colors

I turn the phone off like it’s something I need to do in case it rings again.

I sit in the kitchen, coffee cooling in my hands.

She’s dying. And whether I want it or not, that fact now belongs to me.

I thought I was done with her. I told Luther I had all the closure I needed. Turns out closure isn’t something you decide once and lock away forever.

Finn finds me rooted to the chair a half an hour later. “Hey, Luther called, he said you haven’t been answering your…Annie?”

I look at him, dazed, and then at my phone.

“I turned it off,” I whisper.

He crouches by my chair. “Talk to me, Annie.”

“The chaplain called. She’s dying. Today.”

He nods.

“He said I sh-should go see her. F-for c-closure.”

He takes my hands in his.

“You want to go,” he says. Not a question.

“I think I do.”

“Okay,” he says immediately. “I’ll come.”

I nod.

“And Luther?” he asks.

I don’t have to think about that. “Luther, too.”

Finn studies me for a moment, then pulls out his phone. “I’ll handle it.”

It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Chowchilla, but Luther insists we take a helicopter.

I don’t argue. I don’t have the bandwidth for it.

Within an hour of Finn calling him, after I turned my phone off, we’re standing on the helipad near the Embarcadero.

The wind is whipping at my jacket, the chop of the blades is loud enough to drown out thought. Luther keeps one hand at my back while Finn stands on my other side, solid as a wall.

The helicopter is sleek, impersonal inside with headsets, leather seats, and the smell of fuel. Once we’re strapped in, the doors shut with a finality that makes my stomach dip.

As we lift, San Francisco falls away beneath us.

The city contracts into geometry—grids, bridges, water flashing silver in the sun.

Life is going on below.

People are biking across the Golden Gate like we were supposed to do today—not going to see a dying or dead woman in a prison hospital.

I press my forehead lightly against the window.

Luther threads his fingers through mine. Finn sits across from us, watching my face instead of the view.