The Third Message novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Come Dance With Me

At ten to six on a Sunday morning, my phone lit up on Miles's nightstand.

The other side of the bed was empty and still warm.

A note lay on his pillow in square handwriting: Unlocking B. There is coffee you don't want on the counter.

I reached for the phone.

It was an email from Burke, sent at five-forty. The subject line was my name.

I read it with my knees pulled up under the blanket.

*Lana.*

*You are my Quaternary Glaciation.*

*The door always faced your window, and it never had a lock.*

*I'm not asking you in. I wanted you to have the sentence the way I meant it.*

*Be happy. I mean that. Burke.*

I read it twice.

The fort came back, blue light through the snow roof and wet wool and a boy with a red nose.

It hurt, and the hurt was clean.

Nobody was reading it out to a crowd, and nobody had changed a word.

It was only mine, in a quiet room, and I could do what I liked with it.

For a decade I would have written back before I finished reading.

I would have said I was sorry for something.

My thumb hovered over the reply button.

Then I closed the email and left it there, unanswered, in the folder where I kept things I had finished.

A week earlier, the chair had written to tell me Bree was in a care facility near her parents' home.

I wished her no harm. I wished her very far away.

I got out of bed.

I dressed in leggings and a gray cardigan, and I left my cane leaning against the wall by the door.

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