The Death Certificate She Wrote for Herself

Summary

The night before the wedding, my sister brought me Bella's death certificate. A climbing accident in the remote Alaskan interior. Survival rate: negligible.

I shredded the paper. I flew out alone. I went to the Yukon and shredded myself, too. I battled altitude sickness, pulmonary edema, and the kind of isolation that makes you think you're going mad. I faced down a pack of wolves, lost, staggering, all for a shadow on a horizon that held no one.

Three years later, I came back—hair matted, skin like leather, a man aged a decade. All I’d found was her ID tag, buried in the permafrost.