Chapter 22: Hailey Alone

Abigail's POV

At six in the morning I walked across the dark campus to the visitors' lodge in my field jacket.

Caleb had texted me at 1:40.

"Hailey's aunt is here. She asked for you. Only you. I'm telling you, and that's all I'm doing."

I had read it three times on the dorm bed.

Then I had slept two hours and made up my mind.

The aunt opened the door of the lodge room.

She was a gray-haired woman in a cardigan, with Hailey's blue eyes and none of Hailey's sweetness.

She looked as if she had not sat down in a day.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I'll be in the hall."

"You can stay."

"She asked me not to." She touched my arm. "Are you sure about this?"

"I'm not afraid of her."

"Good," she said. "Nobody has said that about her in ten years."

She left and pulled the door almost shut.

Hailey sat on the edge of a made bed in a gray sweatshirt and jeans.

There was no pink windbreaker. Her hair was loose and flat, and her suitcase stood packed by the door.

She looked younger than at the dinner, and a lot less like a person trying to look young.

"Hi, Abby," she said.

"Hi."

I didn't sit.

"I don't have anything to say that will help," she said.

"I tried to write it, and it all came out like a speech."

"Then don't give a speech."

"Okay."

The room was quiet. A truck passed on the lake road.

I asked her the question I had been carrying across the campus.

"Hailey, what do you want?"

She blinked.

"What?"

"Right now. For yourself. What do you want?"

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