Chapter 14: Lost Causes

Hattie's POV

Chef took the phone out of Delaney's hand and put it face down on the pass.

"Who a student spends the night with is not on my list," she said. "Forged signatures are."

She sent Delaney to the office with two classmates walking behind her.

Delaney went with her bun perfect and her mouth shut, and she did not look at me once.

Then Chef told the rest of us to scrub down and go home.

Nobody moved for a second.

Bridget found me by the walk-in, hugged me hard enough to lift my boots off the floor, and said into my shoulder, "Twenty-two."

"I know."

"Twenty-two, Hattie."

I laughed and wiped my face with my sleeve, and I looked over her shoulder for Rafe.

He was already gone.

At six that evening I walked across the strip of grass with his last letter in my jacket pocket.

He was on his back step, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, and he stood up so fast he knocked over a coffee cup.

"You won," he said.

"We won."

"You won. I only made it worse."

"Sit down, Rafe."

He sat.

I took the letter out and held it where he could see his own square capitals.

"My mother kept these," I said. "Thirty-one of them. In a cedar chest at the foot of her bed."

He stared at the paper.

"Your mother asked her to," I said. "The men were watching the post office. She said it would be a few weeks."

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