My Last Wish novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: A Thousand Slips

I sat down on the cold concrete floor in front of the open drawer.

Dane crouched beside me, and he didn't touch me.

"He read them every night," he said. "In the kitchen, standing up, with Tierney's number open on his phone. He'd read a slip, take a picture, and drop it in the trash under the sink."

"And you took them out."

"I took the trash out every morning, when I came to walk Teddy. Nobody asked me to. It just seemed like a thing a neighbor would do." He looked at the floor. "Day one I saw your handwriting on top of the coffee grounds. I stood there a long time."

"Why did you keep them?"

"They were yours."

I pulled open the second drawer.

A slip, and a tag.

2. Sleep through one night. Not mine. The doctor's pills did that one. I sat on your porch until the light went off.

I pulled the third.

3. A new robe. Bought it Saturday. Left it on the porch. He said he'd picked it out.

I went on.

I couldn't stop, and Dane didn't try to make me.

Drawer eight held a library book with its bookmark still in it.

Drawer twenty-two held a postcard from my old friend in Ohio, and the tag said, I tracked her down. She cried on the phone.

Drawer forty held a small cassette player with a tape of my mother's voice, which I had thought was lost in a flood.

I put my hand on it and could not speak.

By the hundredth drawer, I wasn't reading anymore.

I was crying with the brass knobs under my palms.

Dane got up and came back with a mug of water, and set it down at my knee without a word.

"Show me fourteen," I said.

← Chapter 10 · All chapters · Chapter 12 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend