Chapter 6: The Empty Box

We got into Minneapolis after midnight, and I slept six hours in Tobias's spare room with the moose blanket over my feet.

At nine the next morning I stood in front of apartment 4C with my own key in my hand.

Ivy had texted at dawn.

Their flights are cancelled again. Connor and Lacey don't land until tomorrow night. You've got today.

"Do you want me to come in?" Tobias asked.

He had parked at the curb and carried up four flattened boxes from his trunk without being asked.

"Yes," I said. "I want someone to see me do this."

"I'll hold the tape."

I unlocked the door.

The apartment smelled like the vanilla candle I'd bought and Connor's cologne.

Three years of my life were in this place.

I stood in the living room and looked at it.

The couch I'd picked.

The rug I'd paid for.

A framed photo of the two of us at a lake, my face turned up to his, adoring.

I took it off the wall and set it face down on the table.

"Bedroom first," I said. "Then the kitchen."

Tobias taped the first box shut with a screech.

I packed my clothes in ten minutes.

I'd never realized how little of the closet was mine.

Connor's suits took up most of the rack.

At the far end hung something I didn't recognize, a soft pink cardigan with a pearl button missing.

I held it up.

It was small, and it smelled of Lacey's peach shampoo.

"Is that hers?" Tobias said from the doorway.

"Yes."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm better than okay." I laid it on the bed. "Now I know where to send it."

I opened the drawer of the nightstand on my side.

It held my paperbacks and my face cream, and a second toothbrush holder that wasn't mine.

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