How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Forty Lanterns
At midnight I pushed open the Lantern Room doors with my mother's last notebook under my arm.
The room smelled like fresh varnish.
The new floor shone.
Only one lantern was lit, the twelfth from the stage, the one with the brass collar he'd bent back in June.
Wyeth was sitting on the edge of the stage under it in his shirtsleeves.
"The engineer let me rewire that one myself," he said. "He checked it twice. He doesn't trust bankers."
"You're not a banker."
"He doesn't trust bellmen either."
I walked across the new floor in my socks, carrying my shoes.
I sat down beside him on the stage.
"You said you were asking," I said. "So ask."
"Did she write about the Christmas party?"
I looked down at the notebook in my lap.
I'd known exactly which one he meant before I opened the box.
The last one was only half full.
The writing stopped on January 5.
I hadn't been able to read past November.
"I don't know," I said. "I haven't got that far."
"Will you read it to me? If it's there."
I opened it.
My mother's handwriting was fast and slanted, the Cs plain, no curls at all.
Room counts. A broken boiler. A note to fire a florist.
December 25.
I read it out loud.
"Party went beautifully. All forty lit. Clemmie poured an entire cocoa down the front of the Wainscott boy. The grandson, seventeen, the one who lost his parents. She cried. He told her it was his favorite stain. Nice boy. Sad eyes. Keep an eye on that one."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of How to Say Our Final Goodbye are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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