The first six days were the longest of my life.
Longer than Vail. Longer than the blizzard. Longer than the night I'd crossed the threshold and the morning I'd found the notebook and the afternoon I'd sat in Dana's office and told Garrett Roe he had a week. Six days of pulling shots and wiping counters and checking my phone and tasting coffee and not hearing from Pueblo while the deadline I'd set ticked toward its end like a pour-over reaching the bottom of the filter — slow, inevitable, the outcome already determined by the grind and the water and the hands that set it in motion.
