Chapter 8: Third Drawer

Dean was still in the park, so we drove to the townhouse alone.

I held Carol's brass key in my fist the whole way.

The front door was unlocked.

Down the hall, a drawer slammed in the bedroom.

I put a finger to my lips, and Giles nodded.

We went to the spare room that Dean called his office.

The desk was a cheap oak one, with a lamp and a stack of insurance brochures.

I knelt in front of the third drawer.

The key went in and turned with a click.

Inside were tax folders, three of them, labeled in Dean's neat block print.

I lifted them out.

Under the folders lay a flat brown envelope with a rubber band around it, and a single folded sheet of lined paper on top.

The paper was creased from being opened and shut many times.

I had never seen the handwriting, but Giles went still beside me, and I knew whose it was.

It said: Tillie.

My hands were shaking too hard to unfold it.

Giles knelt beside me.

"You don't have to read it now," he said.

"I have to."

I unfolded it.

Under my name, in careful blue ink, he had written the Lantern, the day and the time.

At the bottom he had written: If you come, I'll be the happiest man in Ohio. If you don't, I'll understand.

"I thought about that last line for an hour," Giles said, very quietly. "I wasn't sure I could stand it if you didn't."

I put my hand over my mouth.

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