Chapter 11 - The Sweater on the Pillow
Vega came to my apartment with two officers and examined the bedroom. Someone had picked the lock without damaging it. A camera across the hall showed Victoria entering at 10:14 that morning, carrying a canvas tote.
"She came here herself?" Nathan asked.
"She wanted me to know she could," I said.
Lily stayed with my neighbor until the officers finished. When she came back, she looked at her pillow as if it might bite her.
"Can I sleep somewhere else?"
"Of course, sweetheart."
June offered her downtown apartment, where a doorman controlled the entrance and the police could arrange extra checks. I said yes because the choice was mine, not because Nathan had enough money to make one for me.
We packed two bags. At the door, Nathan waited with a brown paper sack.
"I brought her crayons," he said. "Mrs. Alvarez said she likes drawing."
"She likes purple," I replied.
He pulled out a box of twenty-four. "Then she's covered."
For a second I saw the boy who used to spend his last twenty dollars buying me flowers at a grocery store. That boy had been kind. He had also let his father explain away my disappearance.
"You can't buy back time," I told him.
"I know. I'm asking for a chance to stop wasting more."
Lily approached, holding her rabbit. "Are you going to go away again?"
Nathan crouched. "Not without telling you where I'm going. And if I say I'll call, I'll call. You can hold me to it."
She considered that, then gave him a purple crayon.
After we left, Vega sent me a photograph of the sweater's inside seam. Someone had stitched in a tiny envelope bearing Wallace's handwriting. The sweater was a copy of Lily's old one, not the original I had donated. The bank number wasn't a threat; it was an address he had saved for whoever found it.
June called five minutes later. "Grace, Dad named Nathan and me joint executors. We can request access to that locker tomorrow."
Then she went quiet.
May you like
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"The bank manager says Pierce tried to empty it yesterday."
