Chapter 5: Butler Street

I picked up my laptop bag from the chair by the door and put it over my shoulder.

Then I took the handle of my suitcase.

"Amy," my mother said behind me. "I mean it."

I opened the front door.

My father was coming up the walk with his school bag and a box of his classroom plants.

He stopped on the step when he saw the suitcase.

"What's going on?"

"She's leaving," my mother said from the kitchen. "Apparently."

My father looked at me. He looked at the bag on my shoulder.

"That laptop," he said slowly. "Amy, that's the work computer. That's got the whole app on it."

He set the box of plants down on the step.

"Josh's going to need that."

He held out his hand for it.

It was the same hand that had written the check.

I took out my phone and typed, and I didn't press speak. I turned the screen to him.

"I bought it with my internship money. You drove me to the store. You carried the box."

He read it.

He remembered. I watched him remember.

Junior year. The electronics store in the mall. He had made a joke about how it cost more than his first car.

He dropped his hand.

"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay."

He picked the plants back up and stepped aside to let me pass.

He didn't ask where I was going.

My car was a 2014 Honda Civic with a cracked dashboard and a bumper sticker from my college that I had never peeled off.

I was loading the suitcase into the trunk when Josh's car pulled into the driveway behind it.

He had come to take Jenna to dinner.

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