Chapter 16: Rowan's Receipt

Rowan's POV

Abigail left my house at ten past five, in yesterday's dress, with her shoes in her hand.

She stopped at the front door and looked at the leash on the hall shelf.

"Still blank," she said.

"Still blank."

"I'm telling him this morning. About the class."

"I'd rather he heard it from you," I said, and meant it, and hated how much I meant it.

She kissed me once, briefly, and went out into the dark.

I sat on the bottom stair and tried to identify what I felt.

It took some time.

It was relief, and under the relief was something I hadn't felt since I was nineteen and our father died and I became the one who signed things.

It was fear.

At six-ten the doorbell rang.

I knew the ring.

He leaned on it in three short bursts, the way he had when he was eight and had lost a tooth.

I opened the door, and Beckett stood on my step in his gray hoodie, unshaven, holding his phone out at arm's length.

"Read it," he said.

On the screen was a text from Abby, sent at 5:31.

Your brother enrolled you in my lecture on purpose. Ask him why. This message is billable.

"She's thorough," I said.

"Rowan."

"Come in."

"I'll stand."

So we stood in my front hall, two tall men in a space built for coats.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"Yes."

"In July."

"The fourteenth. I moved you from the afternoon section to the morning one."

"Why?"

I had rehearsed this at three in the morning, in several versions.

None of them had been this short.

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