Chapter 13: Doorway

I did not say a word.

The phone was still lit in my hand, and Bowen's last message glowed above my unread one.

Drake did not step into the room.

He stayed in the doorway with his hand on the frame.

"Say it," I told him.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you came up here to say. You've had eight months to practice."

He nodded slowly.

"They gave me his phone the Saturday after the funeral," he said. "In a plastic bag. The screen was cracked, but it still worked."

His voice was flat.

"His passcode was my birthday. I opened it to see who he was driving to."

"And you found me."

"I found a thread called Moth, and a message he never opened. Then I found your last stream."

I closed my eyes.

"You were on a bench in a paper mask," he said. "You said, 'Somebody come get me.' You laughed when you said it."

"I was cold. I was joking."

"I know that now." His jaw shook once. "In February I did not know anything. I just knew he was dead, and you were laughing."

I opened my eyes. He was looking at the floor.

"I had your voice for two weeks before I had your face," he said.

"My mother kept his recordings of you. I played them at night."

"Paper Boats."

"Then I heard you humming it at your locker. Second Monday of February."

The rain ticked against Bowen's window.

"I wanted somebody to pay," he said. "You were the closest thing to him I could put my hands on."

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