Chapter 10: The Tin

Declan's POV

I waited until Hallie was asleep, and then I drove to Maine.

Linscott would call it a violation of three separate orders.

He would be right.

I left the car at the bottom of the hill at two in the morning.

I climbed the back stairs to the room over the bar.

Susie's sister had given the Bureau a key and a week.

The week was nearly up.

The room smelled of old coffee and wool.

A cot, a desk, one shelf of paperbacks with the spines cracked white.

On the refrigerator, a sheet of paper in Susie's blocky hand said: DEAN, EAT SOMETHING.

I had read that note every morning for four years.

I stood in front of it with my hands in my pockets for what felt like a long time.

Then I started on the desk, because it was something to do with my hands.

She had never locked it.

In the bottom drawer, under the tax forms, there was a cookie tin.

Inside were four rectangular receipts from four different post offices, stapled to a sheet of lined paper.

I didn't need to read the sheet.

I had written those cards myself, one every April, with a pen I borrowed from Susie.

She had driven them to four different towns, so that no postmark would say Millbrook.

The sheet was her record.

H. April 11. Rockland.

H. April 11. Belfast.

H. April 11. Bath.

H. April 11. Ellsworth.

Under the last line, she had written in red pen: Tell her, you coward.

I sat down on the cot, and the cot creaked.

I had thought about telling her, most nights.

Susie knew.

That was why she'd written it, and why the tin was in the drawer where I would find it.