The Photo Said I Must Die novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Bottom Shelf

Oliver typed with his thumbs shaking.

I read it over his shoulder: I'm not coming. If you have something to say to Dani, say it to her face.

The three dots appeared under it and vanished.

They appeared and vanished again.

No answer came.

"She won't say it by text," Oliver said. "She never says the real thing by text."

"No," I said. "She says it to forty people at a party."

He gave a short, ugly laugh, and then he put his head in his hands.

Judd and I left him on the steps with the coffee.

I didn't know where I was walking until I was on the cellar stairs.

The bulb was on.

Judd came down behind me, and he stopped on the last step.

The padded box sat on the bottom shelf, taped shut again.

Someone had put a new padlock on the cellar door, and the key was in his hand.

"I changed it before sunrise," he said. "While you slept. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that either."

"You're telling me now."

"I'm telling you everything now. I made a list." He took a folded paper out of his back pocket. "It's short and it's ugly."

I unfolded it.

It was in his square, careful print.

Briana called in July. I said yes to pouring. I took twelve hundred dollars. I knew about the bottle for a month and said nothing. I told my aunt this morning, and she called me a name I won't write down.

At the bottom he had written: Anything I didn't think of, ask me.

I read it all the way through twice.

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