Chapter 20: Nine Years on a Phone

Wes's POV

The text came while I was reading the building directory for the fourth time.

Come up. Please. Fourth floor, the green door.

She had asked.

I took the stairs two at a time anyway.

Brooke was gone.

The door stood open a hand's width, and Nora sat on the couch with her phone in both hands.

She was dry-eyed and white.

"It finished," she said. "Ninety-one percent, and then it finished. Brooke's phone lost it a second after."

"You have the clip."

"I have it in three places. I emailed it to myself before you got to the stairs."

"Good."

"Wes." She held out the phone. "I need you to hear it. I won't say what's on it. You just listen."

"Do I get to ask first?" I said.

"Ask."

"Do you want me to hear it alone, or with you?"

She patted the cushion, and I sat.

She pressed play.

I heard a lake and a porch.

I heard a shower running, and a woman singing off-key.

Then I heard a voice I would have known anywhere, because I had spent nine years asking it a question.

Then I heard Lacey read the sentence.

Don't come tonight. I changed my mind. Please stop writing to me.

She read it the way a person reads a toast.

She laughed when she pressed send.

Nora's hand closed on my wrist. I did not feel it for a moment.

I had kept that line in my phone for nine years.

I had read it in airports, and in a trailer in the desert.

I had pictured a woman making a cold decision.

I had hated her face, and I had stayed fair about it, because the choice was hers.

It had never been hers.

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