Chapter 6: Signed

I had fifty-six unread emails from Marshall.

I'd been deleting the notifications since February without opening a single one.

That night I took my laptop to the station library, a room with two couches and a shelf of paperbacks nobody had finished.

Next door, the crew was watching a movie about a shark.

Somebody screamed every time the music changed.

I opened the oldest email first.

Thea, I'm at the airport.

They won't tell me which plane. Please call me.

The next one.

I've told my mother. I've told the board.

I'm telling everyone. Where are you?

The one after that.

I went to the apartment. Your closet is empty.

You took the blue sweater. You hate that sweater.

I did hate that sweater.

It was warm.

I kept reading.

By the twentieth email he'd stopped using full sentences.

By the thirtieth, he'd postponed the wedding.

I've told Amber the date doesn't work.

I haven't told her why, because she knows why.

By the fortieth, he was writing about our first apartment.

Do you remember the radiator that banged all night?

You said it sounded like a man trying to get out of a filing cabinet.

I think about that every time I can't sleep. I can't sleep.

I closed my eyes.

In the next room, the shark ate somebody and twenty people cheered.

The door opened and Boone came in with a bowl of popcorn the size of a hubcap.

He looked at my face.

"Bad?"

"Long."

"Him?"

"Fifty-six of him."

He sat on the other end of the couch and put the popcorn between us.

He didn't ask to read any of it.

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