Chapter 14: The Kitchen Drawer

Vaughn's POV

I signed myself out against medical advice while a nurse glared at me.

My hip ached where they had taken the marrow, and I drove anyway.

Outside Madison I stopped at a gas station and did something I had avoided for five years.

I opened my phone and played the voicemail I had saved and never listened to.

It was from Geneva, the Thursday before the funeral.

"Hey, it's me," she said. "I know you're drowning right now. I'm not calling to fix anything."

"I just want you to know I'm here, whatever it costs. Call me when you can."

"I love you. Okay. Bye."

I put my forehead on the steering wheel.

For five years I had told myself she never said it first.

I pulled out of the lot and drove the rest of the way with the window down.

The lake town was dark when I reached it.

Geneva's grandmother's house stood at the end of a gravel road, gray under the moon, with one light on in the kitchen.

A silver car sat in the drive.

The glass in the back door was broken, and it lay on the inside of the step.

I went in through the hole.

Kendra knelt on the kitchen floor beside an open drawer.

A recipe tin had been tipped out, and dishcloths lay everywhere.

She had a cream envelope in her hand.

The front burner of the old stove was lit, blue and hissing.

"Vaughn," she said, and tried to smile. "Thank God. I found it."

"You found it."

"I came to bring it to you. I didn't want you to open it alone."

"You broke the door."

"It was already open."

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