I Was Already Gone novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Shoebox

Elliott's POV

Roxie texted me at ten past six.

"Come to the café. Bring all seven notebooks. Don't ask."

I had never carried them all at once, and they weighed more than my guitar.

When I got there, the chairs were still on the tables, and the lights were half on.

Laney sat at the window with a shoebox in front of her.

Roxie stood behind the counter, making coffee with her back to us, which was her way of giving us the room without leaving it.

I set the notebooks down.

"Thanks for coming," Laney said.

"I almost didn't."

"I know."

She peeled the tape off the lid and took out the cards.

There were eight of them, in plain envelopes, each one softened at the corners from being opened.

She laid them out in a row, oldest on the left.

I knew every one by its envelope.

"I was thirteen for the first one," she said. "It said, 'Happy birthday, Lane. The sky owes you a better day.' I read it on the bus."

"I remember."

"You didn't sign it."

"I didn't. Brecken handed it to you."

"He always handed it to me." She touched the third envelope. "And in August, the first night we were together, I got these out to show him. I wanted him to know I'd kept every one."

My stomach went cold, because I could see where it was going.

"He read them for a long time," she said. "And then he said, 'I wrote those.'"

"He said that?"

"He said you were the mailman. That you couldn't get a sentence out of your mouth, so he wrote the words, and you copied them down in your own handwriting because his was bad." She pressed her lips together. "He said you were happy to do it."

I opened the first notebook to the page I wanted, and I turned it around.

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