Maya reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled, stained envelope. It was addressed to Elias in Sarah's looping, frantic handwriting. It had been tucked inside her glove box, overlooked in the wreckage until a bored clerk decided to tidy up half a decade later.

But the card was proof of a 'what was.' For one brief, beautiful moment before the world went dark, she had chosen him. He wasn't just a grieving friend; he was the person she wanted to walk toward.

Elias sat at the booth in the back of "The Daily Grind," the same booth where he’d sat every February 14th for the last decade. In front of him was a single cupcake with pink frosting and a plastic heart ring stuck into the top. It was gaudy, cheap, and exactly what Sarah would have loved.

The snow in Silver Falls didn’t fall so much as it drifted, coating the rusted swing sets and the quiet main street in a layer of deceptive purity.