The Bull Charges at the Wrong Wall

The sentence would not leave her alone.

"By the time you read this, I may have to come home."

Zara lay on her bed in the dark, the house quiet around her, the bundle of six letters beside her on the pillow like a small animal that had followed her home. She had opened the last letter first, because fear always reads the ending first. But the chart had said something else. The chart said: Read the letters.