Page 136 of Never Alone
Don't look for me. Take care of Noah.
I read it.
I read it again.
Quinn was in the doorway. She hadn't come in. She was watching me.
I folded the paper. I put it in my pocket.
I picked up the ring. I put that in my pocket, too.
I went down the hall to our bedroom.
I opened the closet.
I stood in front of it for a long beat.
My clothes were where they had been. Hers were where they had been. The shoes were lined up where they had been. The only thing missing was a thing I had not known was there to be missing.
There was a square of empty space at the back of the closet, on the floor, behind the long coats. The corner of the carpet was slightly compressed where something had sat. The kind of compression a bag makes when it sits in one place for a long time.
I had lived in this apartment with her for months.
I had not known there was a bag.
I closed the closet door.
I went back out to the kitchen.
Quinn was at the doorway still.
"Bakery."
"Cole—"
"Bakery, Quinn."
She didn't argue.
She drove. I sat with the note in my pocket and the ring in my pocket on top of it and watched the streets go by.
Mrs. Thompson came around the counter when she saw my face.
I told her.
She didn't ask for details. She told me, fast and clean, about the bag. It had been ready since the first week Tessa came to Havensworth. Cash. Documents. Two sets of clothes for her and for Noah. A burner phone Tessa had bought at a gas station the morning she'd fled Nicholas. The bag had sat in the back of the closet for eight months. Mrs. Thompson had hoped she'd never use it.
She said it the way Mrs. Thompson said hard things to people she loved: without softening any of it.
"Cole. She's been ready. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, ma'am."
Benjie was at the case. He'd gone still while Mrs. Thompson had been talking. I asked him if Tessa had ever said anything. Anywhere. A city, a state, a place she liked the sound of.
He thought for a beat.
"She said once she wanted to be somewhere she could feel warm again. Palm trees. She was joking, kind of. I don't know if it helps."
