The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: What Braden Kept

Braden came to Alder Street on Tuesday at four, and he knocked on the front door like a stranger.

I let him in.

He stood in the narrow hall with a folder in his hand and did not look around.

"I'm not staying," he said.

"Then say what you came to say."

"May I sit?"

I pointed at my mother's yellow table.

He sat in the same chair he had used the night he gave me the lease.

I stayed on my feet.

"I have a list," he said. "I wrote it down so I wouldn't leave anything out."

"I don't want a list."

"I know. You can have it anyway." He unfolded a sheet of paper. "The first thing is the recipe tin."

I felt my stomach turn over.

"The night I waited for you in this kitchen, I opened the tin," he said.

"I wanted something of yours to hold. I turned over the card for the lemon bars."

"You read it."

"I read the note. Room four. Daphne gave me the cup."

The clock ticked above the stove.

"I put the card back on top of it," he said.

"Then I waited for you to come in the door, so I could tell you what I thought of you."

I said nothing.

I could not.

"I knew, Joanna. Not all of it."

He swallowed.

"I held your own handwriting, Joanna, saying Daphne gave you the cup, and I buried it. I could not afford for it to be true."

"Why not?"

"Because then every cold thing I said to you for five years was said to a woman I had hurt."

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