Chapter 11: The Pencil Notes

I read the pencil notes sitting on my bedroom floor, with my back against the bed.

The handwriting was small, neat, and slanted to the right.

Next to Rule One, where the tenant pays rent in person before nine, it said:

L will stand at the door with her watch. Don't tell her it's a joke.

I put my hand over my mouth.

Next to Rule Two, no nails, it said:

She hangs everything dead straight. Nobody else is allowed, or she'll fix it at night.

Next to Rule Three, quiet hours, it said:

L sings in the shower and thinks nobody hears. Let her think so.

Rule Four had the longest note, and the pencil pressed harder there.

She will guard this one hardest. Somebody should break it for her. Love, H

I sat very still.

The sheet I had signed was a joke.

A woman who loved Lena had written every one of those rules to make her laugh.

I did not think Lena had ever been told.

She had enforced all of it, to the letter, for two years, because she thought it was Hannah's last word.

My eyes stung.

The knock came at two o'clock.

Three slow raps, exactly spaced.

I jumped so hard that I knocked my head on the bedpost.

I shoved the twelve pages under my pillow and tugged the blanket over them.

Then I went to the door with my heart in my throat.

Lena stood on the landing with the flashlight.

"Rule Four," she said.

"One," I said, too fast.

"You look strange."

"I was drawing."

She studied my face with her head tilted.

"You were crying."

"A little. It was a sad fox."

She stepped in and shut the door.

"Show me the fox."

"It's, um, in the bedroom."

"Then I'll count it there."

I walked ahead of her down the hall, and I felt her behind me, slow and level.

In the bedroom she looked at the bed, at the lump under the pillow, and at me.

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