Chapter 24: Room 3, Locked

Brynn's POV

On the first Friday in January, I took the shoebox out of my work bag for the last time.

I carried it onto the floor under my arm, between a stack of charts and a lunch bag.

Dee was at the desk with her glasses on her nose and a pen behind her ear.

"What's in the box?" she said.

"You know what's in the box."

"I do." She held out her hands. "Hand it over."

I set it on the counter.

Dee took a marker from the cup and wrote on the lid in thick black capital letters.

OPEN AT MY RETIREMENT PARTY. NO EXCEPTIONS.

"You can't be serious," I said.

"I've got nineteen years on this floor and nineteen more in me. I'll be sixty at the party, and I want a good laugh."

She put it on the top shelf of the supply cabinet, behind the spare blood pressure cuffs.

She locked the cabinet, and put the key on her chain.

"There," she said. "Safe."

"Dee."

"What?"

"Thank you."

She looked at me over her glasses.

"Honey, you were the best thing that ever walked onto this floor with a secret in her bag."

I laughed, and I was crying too.

Judd came by at noon, which he had started doing, with a paper sack of sandwiches from the place near the station.

His wife came with him this time, with her hand on her stomach.

"Four months," she said, before I could ask.

"Judd!"

"We wanted to tell you first," my brother said, pink to the ears. "Before Mom. She's going to lose her mind."

I hugged them both, hard.

Ezra came out of the elevator behind them with his coat over his arm and the ring on his hand that matched mine.

Judd turned and held out his fist.

Ezra bumped it.

Nobody said a word about the gym.

At seven the floor emptied out.

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