Chapter 14: The Box in the Study

Alaric locked the study door at seven in the morning and took the box down from the top shelf.

It was a plain shoebox, gone soft at the corners.

He had opened it last on the night she woke up as the seventh.

The green scarf lay on top.

She had worn it on the bridge, the first night, with her brown eyes lifted and her chin up.

"I have thirty days," she had said. "Then you will say it, and I will go home."

He had been twenty-seven, and rude to her, and bored.

He had asked her to dinner the next week just to watch her fail.

Under the scarf was a lighter that no longer worked.

Second face, black hair, a house fire on the west side.

She had walked into it because a child's name was being shouted from a window.

She had died holding a stranger's daughter.

He had stood in the cold outside the burn unit with the child's mother.

He had asked himself the question he asked after every one of them.

*How do I stop it.*

He had never found the answer.

He took out a hospital bracelet, a library card, a pair of knitted gloves she had left in his car.

Every object was a day he could name.

He set the last thing on the desk.

It was a paper cup with a stain of dried ginger tea at the bottom, from the supply closet on the night she woke up as the seventh.

He had poured it himself.

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