Chapter 9: The Result

Erik's POV

I left at eight with a jar in my jacket and Eli's arms still around my neck.

Jo walked me to the porch.

She had flour dried on her sleeve and her arms crossed against the cold.

I wanted to take her away from that house and never let her go back.

"Go," she said. "Before he comes out."

"Lock your door tonight."

"It's my door. I always lock it."

"Then lock it twice."

She nearly smiled.

I drove to the county hospital with the jar on the passenger seat, and I didn't turn on the radio.

My friend ran labs on the night shift.

She'd sat next to me in a paramedic course nine years ago, and she still owed me for a bad winter.

She held the jar up in the fluorescent light.

"Where did this come from?"

"A kitchen."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's what I'm going to say."

She looked at me, sighed, and sent it back to the machines.

I sat in the break room for six hours.

At some point I took the folded note out of my wallet and read it under the vending machine's light.

I had kept it there for four years.

Erik. Don't come back. Please leave us alone. J.

Block letters, in pencil. It had come in an envelope with no stamp, left in my truck.

I had wanted it to be a lie for four years.

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