Chapter 22: Dad's Last Sunday

Lizzie's POV

The knock came at six o'clock exactly, three times, not loud.

I was sitting on my bed over the bakery with the lamp on, and I let the sound stay in the room for a moment first.

For eight years that man had sat twelve houses away.

I got up and opened the door.

Anthony stood on the landing in a dark coat with the rain on his shoulders.

He had come up the outside stairs. His hands were empty, except for a small metal case.

"I knocked," he said.

"I heard."

"Was it all right?"

"It was late by about eight years," I said. "Come in."

My room was one room. It had a bed, a hot plate, a table by the window, and the yellow rain hat on the shelf above it.

He looked at the hat.

Then he looked at the floor, and I let him stand there while I turned the lamp lower.

"My mother says you didn't buy her building," I said.

"No. I only wanted her to know I'd have done it."

"She told me she said no."

"She did. Twice."

I sat on the bed and patted the quilt beside me.

He sat. Our knees didn't touch.

"You have something for me," I said.

He put the case in my hands. It was gray and no bigger than a deck of cards.

"Gerard gave it to me two days before he died," he said. "He told me to wait until you'd stopped needing him to ask."

"I haven't."

"I think you have."

I ran my thumb over the button.

"Do you know what's on it?"

"No. I never listened."

I looked at him for a long time.

Then I pressed play, and the rain on the window got very loud.

There was a click, a cough, and then my father's voice.

It was thinner than I remembered.

"Lizzie," it said. "This is a Sunday. I just hung up on you, and I'm recording this because I hung up too early again."

I held the case with both hands.

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