Chapter 6: Eleven Notebooks

Captain Ji drove her home himself that afternoon, with Luo in the back seat pretending to be asleep.

"The colonel said Monday," Wanning said. "That's two days."

"The colonel said Monday because he is polite. Anyone who wanted that folder empty will want the rest of it gone too."

He parked outside her building and got out before she could answer.

Her flat was on the fourth floor, with a door that stuck.

He looked at the lock for a long moment, then at the door frame, and said nothing.

Inside, the bedroom was just as she had left it, with the unmade bed and the red cloth hanging above the headboard.

His eyes went to the cloth and stayed there.

"Why is the last petal bare?"

"My grandmother ran out of years," Wanning said. "She said it would be finished when I was."

He did not say anything. He looked at the unstitched corner of silk, and then he looked away.

She knelt and pulled the cardboard box from under the bed.

It held her notebooks, plain black ones with soft covers, each one dated on the first page in her own handwriting.

She laid them out on the floor in a row.

"Two winters of first drafts," she said. "I write by hand first. I always have. I only type it up when it's right."

Captain Ji sat down on her floor with his back against the wall and picked up the oldest one.

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