Finally Moving On After A Decade novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Voicemails

Brooks's office was on the fourteenth floor of a glass building by the river, and at seven in the morning he was the only one in it.

I had left Freja asleep with a note on the nightstand.

It said, "Gone to see B. Back by noon. Don't decide anything."

Brooks had a laptop open on a conference table, a yellow legal pad, and a bruise coming up purple along his jaw.

I had given it to him.

He didn't mention it.

"Sit," he said. "I'll play five. I have two thousand one hundred and six."

"Of what?"

"Voicemails. I never deleted one."

He turned the laptop toward me and clicked a file.

The file name was a date.

The seventh of November, ten years ago.

A young woman's voice came out of the speakers, ragged and wet.

"Brooks, please pick up. Please. You can't just say you're done. I'll tell your parents, I'll tell everyone you hit me, I'll tell them anything, just don't do this to me."

My own hands had gone cold.

It was Lydia at twenty-one.

I knew the exact way her voice broke on "please."

"I never hit her," Brooks said.

"I know."

"You don't know. You believe it. That's different." He did not say it unkindly. "I'll play the next one."

He clicked.

The thirteenth of November.

"Hi. It's me." Her voice was lighter now, almost happy. "I wanted you to hear this. There's a guy at my bus stop, he's twenty-two, he fixes furniture for his uncle. I cried a little and he gave me his scarf."

My scarf.

It had been blue, and it had been my grandmother's.

"I told him you won't leave me alone," Lydia said on the recording. "He's furious. He wants to protect me. It's kind of perfect, actually. Don't call me back, it's better if you don't. You can be the reason I need him."

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