The Boy You Starved for Him novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: I'll Make It Last

After closing, Norman pushed three tables together in the empty diner and put a pot of coffee in the middle.

Hallie sat on my left with her laptop open.

Mom and Dad sat on my right, with one empty chair between them.

Dad had fanned his forty-one pages across the table.

Mom's sixty-three messages were open on her phone.

"Somebody built a second Quinn," Hallie said. "Let's find out who."

"It was your brother," said Norman. "I'm just saying it out loud."

"We don't know that," Mom said quickly.

"Okay," Hallie said. "Then we read."

She asked for a pen and began to make a list on a napkin.

The first thing she noticed was the dates.

"Every message to your dad lands on the first or the second of the month," she said. "Look at this one. October first, eleven forty a.m. This one, September first."

"The first," Dad said.

"The day the deposits go out."

"And mine?" Mom asked.

She turned her phone around.

Her messages were just the same. Every month had a burst on the first and the second.

"So whoever it is," Hallie said, "knows the day the money moves, and writes in the hour after."

Nobody answered her.

I read one of Mom's messages out loud.

"'Thanks for the money, Mom. I'll make it last.'"

I read it again.

My voice sounded strange in the quiet room.

"What?" Dad said.

"I never said that."

"You write it on the first of every month," Mom said, frowning. "You and your brother both."

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