Part 3My Last 100 Sunsets

Denise moved her livestream setup out to the courtyard of Veylune Inn.

A few familiar neighbors had gathered around the cosmos flowers I'd planted myself. Doris Greene, who sold breakfast nearby, stood at the front, still clutching her apron in one hand.

I kept my own livestream running, the camera still trained on the snowcapped mountains of Varenia. I stayed off camera and said nothing.

Eric joined Denise's call while he was on his way to the airport. His voice was tight with barely restrained anger. "Denise, shut the stream down right now. What do you get out of ruining the inn?"

Denise turned the volume all the way up and set her phone on the stone table in the courtyard. "Eric, is the inn's reputation really the only thing you care about?"

Then she played a recording.

The inn's kitchen exhaust fan roared in the background, and Eric's voice came through slightly muffled.

"The doctors never said she couldn't get better. But she's terrified of pain, so who knows if she'll even stick with treatment? This illness takes too much out of everyone. We'll just have to take it as it comes."

The neighbors exchanged glances. Doris covered her mouth.

Eric was silent for a couple of seconds. "I did see her pathology report."

He took a deep breath, somehow sounding like he was the one who'd been wronged.

"When I said she might not stick with it, it was because I know how afraid of pain she is. I didn't want her going into treatment with even more pressure on her. I was going to wait until she got better before we dealt with any of this."

Denise scoffed into the microphone. "Eric, you really can justify anything, can't you? You were using Alice's treatment to buy yourself time. You left her to handle all the day-to-day work at the inn while promising me that someday, you'd make things official with me."

Eric's voice turned cold. "Don't act like you're innocent, Denise. Last month, when Alice had to go to the hospital to pick up some documents, didn't I tell you to make sure she stayed in the city overnight?

"You were the one who texted her and said the inn was busy so she'd rush back that same night. You wanted her to catch us together, didn't you?"

Denise's face went white. She bit her lip and stared straight into the camera. "No, I'm not innocent. I knew you had a fiancée. I knew she was sick, and I stayed with you anyway."

Her voice shook. "I just couldn't walk away. I gave you months of my life, and in the end, you still didn't choose me."

In the courtyard, Steven Lester, one of the inn's longtime employees, sighed. "Mr. Jones, you can't treat people like this."

He leaned closer to Denise's phone. "Last week, Ms. Graham was in so much pain she could barely stand. She asked you to go to the hospital and pick up her pain medication.

"You had Denise cover your shift, but instead of picking up her medication, you drove into town to buy the new game console that had just come out."

Eric fell completely silent on the other end of the call. This time, he didn't try to make another excuse.

I sat in my cabin in Varenia and listened until the confrontation was over. Outside my window, the setting sun had turned the snowcapped mountains a blinding gold.

I reached out and muted the livestream comments. For the first time, I turned on my microphone.

"I'll be alive to hear the rest."

I looked into the camera, my voice so calm that it sounded like I was talking about someone else. "But I'm not coming back to decide which one of you is worse."

I ended the call with Denise, opened my streaming dashboard, and scheduled my next livestream. I changed the title to "On My Final Stream, I'll Only Talk About My Decision."

Five minutes later, the dashboard showed that Eric had visited my profile. He must have seen the title while he was waiting at the airport.

He finally realized that ridiculous engagement was never the only thing I intended to end.