Chapter 13: The Green Tag

I knew that green.

I had stared at it for three days, a strip of flaking paint down the middle of a cabin door.

The wood tag in my palm was the same color.

I carried the key back to the bed and knelt on the quilt beside him.

Seth woke all at once, with his hand already closed.

His eyes went to my fist, then across the room to the jacket on its hook.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

The laundromat left order pads by the door for lost-sock claims, and I'd kept one on the nightstand.

I wrote in block capitals and held it up: WHAT DOES THIS OPEN.

He read it.

"Hattie," he said. "Give it here."

I shook my head.

He let his arm drop.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. I'll tell you. Then you can put me down those stairs, and I'll thank you for it."

I sat on the edge of the mattress with the pad on my knee and the key on top of the pad.

"Eight weeks ago a man from the hospital's contractor crew called me," he said. "The one who works the morgue."

My stomach turned over, because I knew exactly who.

"He said a rich family wanted a scare. A pretend kidnapping, two women in a cabin for three nights, nobody touched. Forty thousand dollars."

I wrote: AND YOU SAID YES.

"I said yes." He looked at the pad and not at me. "I needed the money. That's not an excuse. I'm only telling you what I was."

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