Chapter 5: The Tin

On the third night, June drove out to Mill Road and left a biscuit tin on the cot in the potting shed.

"It was under your bed," she said. "I didn't look in it."

"You don't have to."

"I know what's in it."

She kissed the top of my head, glared at the greenhouse light, and left.

I sat with the tin on my knees until Greer came across the gravel with two mugs and a flashlight.

She had not spoken to me properly since Saturday.

She had made me carry flats of begonias and eat standing up at the bench, and she had checked my cast twice a day for swelling.

Now she set one mug on the crate beside me and stayed standing.

"That's not a true thing," she said, looking at the tin. "That's a biscuit tin."

"It's today's."

"Open it."

"You open it."

She lowered herself onto an upturned bucket, put the flashlight on her knee, and pulled the lid off.

Eight white index cards lay in the bottom, face up.

The top one was soft at the corners.

She read the first line out loud.

"Benji is dead."

Her thumb went down the stack.

"Asa left him at the water. You lost two years. Do not speak to him." She stopped. "That's the same card as mine."

"It's the same eight times."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Lover on Loop: Her Cruel Revenge Game from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.