Chapter 8: The Grocery List

Gavin's POV

Hazel left the brownstone at six on Sunday morning to look for her mother.

She kissed my forehead and said she would call from the car.

She forgot her bag.

I found it on the hall bench at seven, with her phone charger hanging out of the side pocket.

I carried it to the door to run after her, and it was heavy.

The black notebook had slid out onto the floor.

I have thought a lot since then about the next minute.

I told myself she had been beaten in a lobby and denied by her husband.

I told myself nobody had ever asked what she carried for him.

I told myself Lydia's last words on that stage meant nothing.

Then I picked the notebook up.

The cover was soft from five years of her hands.

I had called it her grocery list so many times that she had stopped correcting me.

I opened it at the back, because that was where Hazel always began a thing, with the end.

The last page was a column of numbers in her small square handwriting.

Dates. Dollar amounts.

At the top it said: BRENNAN TOOL AND DIE. Sale price vs. appraisal.

The appraisal was four million, one hundred thousand dollars.

The sale price was one million, six hundred thousand.

Under it, in my father's initials: R.P. signed. R.P. approved. R.P. told T.B. nobody else would bid.

I turned back a page.

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