The message came in just after dawn.
We're leaving this morning. Still time to change your mind.
Don't forget, when we are dead and buried, Nadia's the only one you have left.
Seraphina read it once and set her phone face-down on the desk. She didn't reply to her mother's message… she had no idea how to.
That last part was her favorite line. You would think that she was 80 years old with the amount that she spoke about her upcoming death. But that was what happened when you had six siblings die before their 40th birthday.
Outside her dorm window, the campus was already more than half-empty. Students who had waited until the very last minute dragged suitcases across salted pavement, hugging friends goodbye in the cold. Inside, her room was still and dim, the only sound the low hum of the heater as it fought off the creeping chill of late December.
