Chapter 12: The Box

Dylan brought the box to Bridgeport himself.

He didn't ring the bell.

He stood at the bottom of the porch steps, holding it in both arms.

It was a plain cardboard carton with my name on the lid in black marker.

Sam opened the door before I could.

"Put it on the table," Sam said.

"I haven't opened it," Dylan said. "I swear."

"Put it down."

Dylan set it on my grandmother's kitchen table.

It was the same wood where Sam had lifted me that afternoon.

I looked at the scuffed edge and stayed very calm.

Marco was in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder. "Do you want me to leave?"

"Stay," I said.

I cut the tape with a butter knife.

On top was an inhaler, a battered, old-model one, with a cracked cap.

"That's mine," I said. "I lost that in the fire."

I had been looking for it for five years. I had searched the hospital, the apartment, the hall at work.

"It was in the stairwell," Dylan said. "Wasn't it?"

"I had it in my hand when I picked you up."

"Then who..." He stopped.

Under the inhaler was a sheet of hospital stationery, folded in half.

I opened it.

It was in Dylan's handwriting, shaky, from the week he woke up in the ICU.

Nina, every breath you take from now on is a debt I owe you.

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