Chapter 15: The Last Page

Travis's threat had sat on my phone for two days: he would call in my file at the dinner, in front of everyone.

I had read it forty times and told no one how much it scared me.

On Saturday morning I found Audrey on her knees in the back garden, spreading mulch over the beds with her bare hands.

It was the garden she had designed our first spring.

I had always thought she built it for a magazine photo.

There was a bench by the kitchen window, and I had sat on it every morning for three years with my coffee.

I had never asked why she put it there.

"Come here," I said. "I brought something."

She sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with her wrist.

I held up the black notebook.

"You said you'd grade it," she said.

"I did."

"I'm not reading the whole thing, Ethan."

"One page. The last one I kept score on."

She took the bench next to me, and dirt from her knees came off on my jeans.

I opened the notebook to the page I had marked with a folded receipt.

My handwriting looked small and tired.

"Day 700," I read. "She laughed at breakfast. I did not write plus one. I wrote it down because I wanted to remember her face."

Audrey did not move.

"Day 701. Nothing to report. I am in love with my wife. That is not part of the mission. The mission is just the reason I'm here."

I closed the book.

"I stopped counting around the time you stopped looking at me," I said. "Bad timing."

She stared at the cover.

"Seven hundred," she said. "I paid in secret for three years, and I thought you were still on a schedule."

"I was, for a while. I won't lie to you about that."

"I know you won't."

"I was a stranger who was told to win you. Then I wasn't."

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