Love Is Gone, So Am I novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Sixty Days

Avis read the letter with her glasses on.

Then she read it again with them off.

"Eighty-four thousand dollars," she said. "In sixty days."

"Or they take the building," the bank man said quietly.

"Who's they?"

He pointed at the letterhead. A company name made of three initials and the word Holdings, with an address in Delaware.

"I don't know who's behind it," he said. "I'm sorry. I'll find out what I can."

He left. The bell rang behind him.

Gus stood at the window with his back to us. His shoulders were rigid.

"It's her," he said.

"We can't prove that," I said.

"We don't have to prove it. We just have to know it."

I didn't sleep that night.

I lay on the narrow bed upstairs in the old bookshop and stared at the water stain on the ceiling and did the math.

The shop had made eleven thousand dollars in five weeks. It was the most money I'd ever earned with my own name on it.

It wasn't eighty-four thousand.

Celia had said it at the diner. You did this.

She was right.

Avis had been fine for fifty-eight years. Then I walked in with that ring on my hand.

At five in the morning I carried my two bags down the stairs and put them in the Subaru.

I left the key to the shop on the counter, under the veil, with a note.

Sell it to her. It's only a building.

You're the part that matters. I'm sorry.

I got into the car.

Avis was sitting in the passenger seat.

I screamed.

"Language," she said, though I hadn't said a word.

"How did you get in here?"

"You never lock it. You're from Boston, you think Vermont is safe." She folded her hands in her lap. "Where are we going?"

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