They Trashed My Books, So I Rewrote My Life novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Brennan Kitchen

Natalie's POV

Amber looked up when I opened the door, and she did not stand.

Her hair was flat and her eyes were swollen, and she held the satchel in both arms.

She looked past me at Rhys on the other side of the street, in last night's shirt.

"The neighbor," she said. "Of course."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Noon. The church basement in Dorchester, where you ate on Wednesdays."

"Why there?"

"Because I'm going live from it," she said. "I have ninety thousand people left, and I'm going to read them your age-ten journal. The page about the coat."

"No."

"You can come and answer it," she said. "Or I read it to an empty room."

She stood, wobbled once and walked to the black car at the curb.

Rhys crossed the street and stopped beside me on the porch.

"Don't go," he said.

"If I don't, she reads it anyway."

"Then I'll drive."

"You don't have to."

"I know," he said. "I'm going to anyway."

At noon the basement smelled like coffee and floor cleaner.

I had not walked down those stairs in eighteen years.

The same long tables stood in the same rows, with the same folding chairs, and thirty volunteers and diners had stopped eating to stare at the ring light.

Amber stood at the head of the room with a phone on a stand and the satchel open on a table.

The red recording dot was on.

"Welcome," she said brightly, and her voice cracked. "I want to introduce you to the woman everyone is crying over."

She held up a notebook with a cracked blue cover.

My stomach turned.

"This is what Natalie Brennan wrote when she was ten," Amber said. "Listen to what she thought of the people who clothed her."

She read.

Dear journal, the coat lady came again. I hate the coat. I love the coat. Mom made me give it back and I cried in the stairwell. Somebody is still paying.

Nobody in the room moved.

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