The Photo Said I Must Die novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ledger

Judd shows Dani the booking Briana paid for in July and the photo she sent him, and Briana phones the inn to say she is on her way.

"Show me the other one," Judd said.

I hadn't told him there was another one.

He had looked at the print in my hand, at the date in the border, and then at my jacket pocket, and he had done the arithmetic faster than I had.

"The old photo is the one that says I die," I said. "I took it from my sister's jewelry box."

I pulled it from my back pocket and held it out.

He took it by the corners, which made me flinch, because it was how Briana held it.

He turned it over and read the blue ink on the back.

D. Terrace. 9 Sept. She does not get up.

Then he turned it back to the front and went quiet.

The woman sat with her face to the sea, and the man across from her had half risen from his chair with his hand out.

"That's me," Judd said.

"I know."

"I don't stand like that. I never reach for people." He rubbed his thumb along the scar on his forearm. "But that's my arm. That's the scar from the grill. I got it when I was nineteen."

"Maybe you're reaching for her because you pushed her."

I said it flat. I had thought it through at three in the morning, on the highway.

He looked up.

"I might have," he said. "I can't tell you what that man in the picture did. I can tell you I haven't done it yet."

"That's not comforting."

"It wasn't meant to be."

I should have been more afraid of him.

I was already past the part where fear helps.

He folded the print gently back into its sleeve and handed it to me.

"Come inside," he said. "There's something you should see before you decide what I am."

He led me through the kitchen door into a narrow office with a roll-top desk, a ship's clock and a heap of invoices.

His aunt owned the inn, he said, and his aunt hated computers, so every booking sat in a paper ledger.

He opened it to a page in July.

A woman's neat handwriting: M. Sewall. Party of two. Table 4. 9 September, 3 p.m.

Under it, in his own scrawl: Terrace clear from 2. No other guests at the rail.

"She asked for that?" I said.

"She said it was a birthday lunch for her sister, and she wanted it private. She sent twelve hundred dollars up front." He rubbed his jaw. "It was the biggest deposit we took all summer."

"Party of two."

"You and her."

I looked at the line again.

Briana had never planned to let me sit alone at that table, and I did not know what that meant.

"There's more," he said. "The photograph she sent. Wait."

He opened the top drawer of the desk and took out a printed picture of me at a family barbecue, laughing, with my mouth full.

I had never been so angry at a snapshot in my life.

"She said you wander," he said. "That you get confused and walk toward the water. She asked me to keep an eye on the rail."

"I don't wander."

"I know that now."

"I haven't been confused one day of my life."

"I figured that out about an hour ago," he said, "when you walked out onto my terrace on purpose."

I sat down on the edge of the desk.

My sister had planned this four months ago.

She had paid a stranger to watch me, and she had told him I was sick.

I thought about the clapping in the garden.

The desk phone rang.

It was an old black phone with a coiled cord, and it was very loud in that little room.

Judd looked at it.

"Don't answer," I said.

"If I don't, my aunt will, and she'll tell her anything."

He picked it up. "Gull Point Inn."

I could hear a voice on the other end, small and warm.

I could hear my sister's voice from across the room.

"Judd, it's Briana Sewall. We spoke in July." A pause. "I'm sorry to call so early. Has my sister come to see you?"

Judd's eyes met mine.

"No," he said. "Why would she?"

"Because she took something from our house last night, and there's only one place it points to."

My stomach turned over.

Briana had seen the front of that print.

She had known the sign, and she had known the place, and she had kept every bit of it from me.

"If she turns up," Briana said, "please don't let her leave. She isn't well. I'm driving up with Oliver now. We'll be there by noon."

"Understood," Judd said, and hung up.

He stood with his hand on the receiver.

"Noon," he said. "She's bringing Oliver, and she's already told me what you are."

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