The Name on the Broadcast novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Trunk

I stared down at the note.

Then I folded it back up, small as it had been, and slid it into the plastic sleeve behind Annie's ID.

My mom thinks I ran away.

Twenty-six years ago, the police told Frances Wooler the same thing.

At twelve-thirty I opened my bedroom window.

The house was dark. My father was asleep in his recliner downstairs with the TV hissing. Grandma's door off the kitchen was shut.

There's a porch roof under my window, and an oak beside it. I climbed down it a hundred times in high school to go sit by the creek.

My body still knew every branch.

The creek runs behind our back field. It's the only spot on our land where a call doesn't drop. Texts barely crawl out of the house.

I sat on the flat rock and called Ben.

He picked up before it rang.

"Hey. You're fourteen minutes late. I was about to start writing my opening monologue."

"Sorry."

"Are you okay?"

I told him about the note.

I read it to him, every word, in a whisper, with the water running loud beside me.

He was quiet for a second.

"Okay," he said. "That changes things."

"I know."

"That's not a twenty-year-old memory anymore. That's a woman next door to you, now."

"I know, Ben."

"So we call the state police. Tonight."

"And say what? A girl gave me a note? They'll call the sheriff. He'll drive over and knock on her husband's door, and she'll say she's fine with him standing behind her. And then she won't be fine."

He looked down at the steering wheel.

"Okay. Then what?"

"Sunday night is the harvest supper. The whole town goes. Every single house. They lock the doors, they cook all day, they eat till ten."

"And the wives?"

"Serve. In the kitchen. With everybody watching."

"So that's no good."

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