Chapter 9: What Giles Did

Giles's POV

Dean came through the door still smiling.

Then he saw the open drawer, and the smile stayed on his mouth while the rest of his face dropped away.

I had stood between him and Tillie before I knew I was doing it.

"Get out of my desk," Dean said.

"It's yours?" Tillie said behind me. Her voice was thin, but it didn't shake. "The note has my name on it."

"It was handed to me."

"To give to me."

"You were twenty-two. You were about to get on a plane to Boston with a man you'd talked to twice."

"That was not your decision."

"Somebody had to make it."

He looked past my shoulder at her and tried softness.

"Tillie. I saved you from a mistake. Look at how it turned out. You'd have been miserable. He'd have bored you in a month."

I wanted to put him through the wall.

I want that in the record, because I did not.

I had watched Tillie flinch at a thumb on her arm, and I knew what a man's hands could cost her.

I stood still and let the anger pass through me.

"You read it," I said.

"Of course I read it."

"You kept it for five years."

"I kept it because it was funny." Dean laughed, and it sounded thin.

"Mrs. Archbold's baby boy writing love notes. You think that's romantic? It's pathetic."

Behind me, Tillie took one step forward.

She had the five cards pressed against her chest.

"Give me one reason," she said, "why I shouldn't read these out loud at your mother's table tonight."

"Those are mine."

"They have my name on every envelope."

"I'm the one who took them out of the mailbox. That makes them mine."

I reached into my jacket pocket.

I had one coin in it, left over from the parking meter at the airport.

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