Chapter 11: Envelopes

My own name, in my mother's handwriting.

I'd know her capital C anywhere. She'd signed it on every permission slip I ever had.

Duane tucked the stack under his arm and started down the back stairs.

I let him go.

I walked back to the corner room barefoot with my heart going like a hammer drill.

The three of them took one look at me and stopped laughing.

I held out the phone.

Abram scrolled through the six frames without a word. Then he handed it to Rand, and Rand zoomed in on the flap.

"The gray mask is on the membership committee," Breck said quietly. "I'd know that beer gut in a snowstorm."

"And the red one?"

"I don't know."

Somebody knocked on the door.

Breck opened it a crack.

A woman in a red satin mask stood in the hall with an envelope in her hand.

She looked past him, at me, sitting on the daybed in Abram's shirt.

"I saw you in the doorway," she said. "With your phone."

"I'm not sorry," I said.

"Good. Neither am I." She held out the envelope. "Fourteen years I've been a member. Since the night it opened. I don't vote for blackmail."

I took it.

She pushed her mask up for one second so I could see her face. Sixties. Silver bob. Kind eyes. Furious mouth.

Then she pulled it back down and walked away.

The flap said CODI in my mother's hand.

Inside were three things.

A proxy form, already filled in, assigning her vote on the buyout to Duane's investment group. A blank line for her signature.

A color copy of the hall-camera still. My head back. Abram's hand in my hair.

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