Chapter 51
CASSIE
It was weird, remembering something you didn’t really remember. Like grasping at a dream right after you wake up, some of the details barely there but already fading.
I thought I remembered the picture of the trees on the wall in the lobby, the blue chairs lined up instead of askew, a gray-haired women with glasses behind the desk with one leg.
I remembered the window too, remembered standing on tiptoe to look outside at the river, more visible because in my memory it was winter and most of the trees had lost their leaves.
“This is some spooky shit,” Jagger said as we made our way down the hall.
“I’m glad we came during the day,” I said.
Because it was spooky for me too.
I counted the doors according to Anna’s direction, but it wasn’t really necessary. I felt pulled toward my dad’s old office like… well, like a mouse hunting for cheese.
We stepped into it — fourth office on the right, just like Anna had said — and I was hit with another wave of memories.
My dad sitting behind a big desk, looking huge and handsome in a blue button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms, dark eyes warm behind his glasses.
There had been a potted treeing the corner next to the window and two chairs in front of the desk, nicer than the blue ones in the lobby, and kind of wooden shelving unit had stood behind the deck.
“This is it,” I said. “I remember.”
The only thing left was the desk, probably too big for the average squatter to move. It wasn’t broken like the one in the lobby, but its wood surface was scarred with carvings.
H + B Forever.
Janey was here.
Can you hear me?
The last one sent a chill up my spine, and I thought of Rain.
Of Jasmine and Nia.
Can you hear me?
“You okay?” Jagger asked softly.
I nodded. “Yeah. They feel close here. My dad… my mom.”
I climbed on top of the desk and stretched to reach the foam panels in the drop ceiling. There were several over the desk, each one about a foot square, and I started pushing them upward, feeling around, looking for whatever my parents had left behind.
I was on the third panel, being around the dusty frame of the ceiling, when my fingers brushed against something: a lump contained in a smooth swath of paper.
Dust spilled around me as I pulled it out.
I coughed, my eyes watering, then looked down at the object in my hands.
An envelope not unlike the one Anna had sent me before her death.
Before her murder.
But this one was plain and unmarked.
I hopped off the desk and tore open the envelope, dumping the contents onto the desk.
There were only two things: a key and a mini-recorder, the kind journalists and writers used in old movies, before everyone used their phone for everything.
The key was nothing special, just a plain silver key, on the small side, with a thin metal key ring, the kind someone gave you when they expected to never see it again.
I picked up the voice recorder, my heart thumping.
“Might need new batteries,” Hawk said.
I pushed play and my mother’s voice — slow, like the batteries on the recorder were wearing down — filled the room.
“If you’ve found this, something has gone wrong.”
I turned it off, my stomach churning, my pulse racing.
“It’s my mom.” I needed to say it out loud.
A declaration that part of her was still here.
With me.
Hawks hand came down on my shoulder.
“We’ll take it home,” he said. “Listen to it there, are sure we have fresh batteries.”
I slipped the key on one back pocket of my jeans and put the recorder in the other.
And that was when we heard the sound of metal on concrete — a shuffle, a screech — from the end of the hall.