Chapter 13

The final stretch did not slow down for Jack.

It accelerated in small, ordinary ways—calendars filling, meetings overlapping, the air shifting from cool mornings to warm afternoons. Jack began to feel time not as a weight, but as momentum.

Most notably, the work no longer centered on him.

At the school near the river, Ravi led the sessions now. Jack sat in the back, watching students gather around compost bins they had designed themselves. Their hands moved with confidence. They corrected one another. They argued, laughed, solved.

When a teacher asked a question, it was Ravi who answered.

Jack felt no loss in that—only completion.

At another site, bamboo shoots had taken hold along the slope. Thin, green, unassuming—exactly the kind of progress that could be overlooked. A year ago, he would have pointed them out eagerly.

Now, villagers did.

“They hold well in rain,” one man said, tapping the soil with his sandal. “Better than last season.”

Jack nodded. “You did this.”

The man shrugged. “We learned.”

That was the point.

Raj’s visits became shorter. More procedural. He no longer hovered. Eric and Natalie waved in passing, busy with their own transitions. Tom spoke of his extension in practical terms—housing, logistics, nothing sentimental.

Jack’s name appeared less often in meeting notes. The projects breathed on their own.

In the evenings, he walked through the neighborhood and saw markers of continuity: children carrying water with practiced balance, Sarita bargaining at the market, Ama Goma seated in her doorway like a constant.

He realized that his absence would not create a vacuum. It would create space.

And that, too, was work.

At night, he packed slowly. Not as departure, but as inventory—books given away, notebooks sorted, a map folded and refolded.

He did not rush. Nothing here felt unfinished.

The work went on, without him at the center. Which meant, of course, that he had done it right.

The lane outside the guesthouse was busy in its usual, modest way—porters passing with sacks of rice, a motorbike easing through, children arguing over a cracked ball. Jack had stopped to buy fruit from a cart when he noticed Anjana stepping out of the Phewa View, a ledger tucked under her arm.

She saw him and smiled, as she always did now.

“Heading out?” she asked.

“Meeting at the school,” Jack said. “You?”

“Inventory,” she replied, tapping the ledger. “The exciting life.”

They stood a few feet apart, angled toward their separate directions. A woman passed between them carrying a basket of greens. A boy waved at Jack and kept running. No one felt the need to linger.

It was as ordinary as it could be.

Anjana gestured toward the cart. “Don’t buy the mangoes yet. They’re still stubborn.”

Jack laughed. “I was fooled yesterday.”

“They always pretend,” she said.

He chose oranges instead.

“Good,” she said. “Those know who they are.”

He looked at her with mock seriousness. “Is that a life lesson?”

She smiled. “Everything is.”

They exchanged a few more small details—weather, work, the way the hills had cleared after rain. Then she adjusted the strap of her bag.

“I should go,” she said.

“Me too.”

They hesitated for the briefest moment—not in longing, but in awareness.

“Take care,” she said.

“You always do,” he replied.

She nodded once and turned down the lane. Jack watched her go, not with ache, but with a settled understanding.

She did not need him to justify her choices. She had never needed permission.

What she had needed—what he had offered—was recognition. Of her precision. Her steadiness. Her refusal to simplify herself.

Jack picked up his bag and headed in the opposite direction, the sounds of the lane folding around him.

Neither of them knew this was the final time they would greet each other in public. It didn’t matter. What they carried did not depend on endings. It had already arrived.