Chapter 18: Rule Three

June's POV

I woke to the smell of coffee and an empty side of the mattress.

The sheet was still warm, and I lay in it with my eyes shut and remembered the night in pieces.

His hands on my hips, his voice saying my name until it broke.

I smiled into the pillow like a fool.

Then I went down the ladder in his flannel shirt, looking for the hum.

The shop was quiet.

He wasn't in it. His truck was gone from the lot, and a cold cup of coffee stood on the bench beside the stove.

Next to the cup was my father's tuning fork, laid on a square of paper.

I picked the fork up, and my fingers found a pencil crease in the paper under it.

I knew Cal's writing by touch, the heavy downstrokes pressed into the page.

I carried it to the window, held it close to my eyes, and read it with my finger under the line.

I'm quitting before day ninety, and you're free of me, June. Keep the shop.

I read it again.

The words did not change.

My ears rang as if I'd struck a piano with the lid down.

It was the sentence from the napkin, the one we had written for a way out.

He had written it the night I slept in his arms.

The truck turned into the lot while I stood there, and I knew it by the heavy left tire and the engine that coughed twice.

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