Memories Without Him novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Text

Vincent stood in the hall for two days.

I knew because every time the door opened, I saw his shoes.

On the third morning he knocked, and I said he could come in as far as the foot of the bed.

He took my phone and my notebook out of his jacket and held them out across the blanket.

"These were with me during the surgery," he said. "I didn't read the notebook again."

"Thank you."

"There's a file on the phone called Read this first. It's yours. Listen when you're alone."

"Is it about you?"

"Yes." His mouth moved, almost a smile. "That's why I'm not going to say anything else."

He left.

I waited until the door closed, and then I did what I had been dreading for two days.

I opened the thread with Vincent's number.

I did not remember typing the first message.

It was stamped 11:52 at night, and my thumbs had been shaking, so there was a typo in it.

Below it was the reply, stamped 2:04, and it was the coldest thing anyone had ever written to me.

After that the thread was empty for six months.

I read it standing up.

Then I sat down on the bed because my knees would not hold, and I understood that the girl I had been at nineteen would have died of it.

I pressed the other file.

My own voice came out, older and tired, and it began by telling me I had lost some years.

It said the text was not Vincent.

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