Chapter 14: Beloved

Ansel's POV

I drove around Boston until four, and then I drove back to Hale Street.

I told myself it was for the car, which I had left running by the curb.

The shop door was unlocked. She had gone up and left it for me, or she had forgotten it.

I climbed the stairs in the dark.

Anneliese was asleep at her kitchen table with her head on her folded arms.

The lamp was still on. The chair I had knocked over stood upright again.

The letter lay beside the sugar bowl, where I had left it.

She hadn't opened it. She hadn't moved it an inch.

I stood over her longer than I should have.

It was twenty to five. I had a rule about that, and the rule was mine, so I broke it.

I took the letter and put my jacket over her shoulders.

She didn't wake.

The cemetery gates opened at six, but there was a side gap in the fence I had known for two years.

I sat on the wet grass in front of the stone.

ROSALIND ALDOUS BUCKINGHAM. Under it, the dates, and a line she would have hated: Beloved.

I held the envelope in both hands for a long time.

Then I broke the seal.

It was one page, in blue ink, and the loops ran uphill as they did when she was nervous.

Ans,

If Annie is giving you this, then she held out longer than I would have, and I'm sorry for both of us.

I'm not leaving because of anything you did. You were so good to me that I couldn't stand being bad at it.

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