Chapter 4: Terms

I didn't get off the porch.

"I never got a letter," I said again. "Where did you send them?"

"Your address in Gran's book. Orchard Street, apartment three B."

"That's Santino's apartment."

"It's the one she wrote in. March of her last year. She said you moved in with a boy who made good garlic bread."

My throat closed.

Gran had liked Santino. She had liked him so much that she made me promise to give him a chance when he forgot my birthday.

"Every letter went to that address," I said. "He got them. I didn't."

Rowan didn't answer.

I took my phone out and scrolled back three years, to the week after the funeral, and held the screen up into his flashlight.

It was Santino's text, the one I had read the week after the funeral.

"Lawyer says the lake place has to go for back taxes. I've handled it, don't worry. You don't have to see it again."

Rowan read it twice, and I watched his face.

"Back taxes," he said.

"That's what he told me."

"Come inside."

He took the spare key out of my hand, put it in the lock, and the door opened the way it always had, with a shove at the bottom.

The house smelled of spilled beer and candle wax.

It did not smell like Gran at all.

Rowan went to the hall closet and brought out a shoebox.

It was full of envelopes, brown county ones, with a window in the front.

"These come to the house," he said. "Every year in January. I keep them. Look at the name."

I looked.

TEGAN MCGOVERN, owner of record.

The stamp on the front of every one said PAID IN FULL.

"The estate account paid the bill every year," he said. "No back taxes. There never were any."

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