It was professional enough to maintain distance and vague enough she might think it came from general company funds rather than my personal cash. The coffee maker was a reasonable pretext. She had, after all, significantly improved the office beverage situation. No one could question the business logic of supporting that initiative.
I sealed the envelope, wrote “Aven” on the front, and made my way down to the basement. The security cameras covered most of the building, but I’d left the archive room off the system. There was no point in monitoring a space that had, until yesterday, been essentially abandoned. This meant I could leave the envelope without creating a record of my uncharacteristic behavior.
The basement felt different in the evening stillness, the absence of Aven’s energy leaving it somewhere between the neglected storage room it had been and the vibrant space she’d created. I placed the envelope in the center of her desk, proppedagainst the computer monitor where she’d see it first thing tomorrow. I let my hand rest on the surface of the desk, feeling oddly connected to her through this piece of furniture she’d salvaged from storage.
“What the fuck are you doing, Black?” I hissed under my breath, shaking my head.
Still, I couldn’t deny the lightness in my chest. By this small act of reparation, I’d begun to address a debt that had weighed me down for longer than I cared to admit. Not just the debt from that day in the sheriff’s office but the debt of how I’d treated her since she’d returned.
Outside, the summer evening had settled into a more bearable temperature between the heat of day and the cool of night. I locked the building and headed to my car, the last one in the lot. Tomorrow would bring questions about where the money came from, but for now, I allowed myself to acknowledge some debts could never be repaid, but that didn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
Chapter
Five
AVEN
Three weeks in Langston’s basement office, and I’d almost convinced myself this arrangement might work.Almost. The money envelope I found the third morningfor the coffee makerbought me enough breathing room to make the minimum payments on my five credit cards. I shut down the ancient computer, watching as the screen blinked to black, taking my neat spreadsheet of processed files with it. Seventy-eight more boxes to go. At my current pace, I’d be done sometime in the next century.
“Night, Aven!” Martinez said from the top of the stairs. He’d lingered later than usual, probably hoping for one more cup of my Brazilian blend before heading home.
“Night!” I replied, adjusting the scarf draped over my desk lamp.
In just three weeks, I had turned the basement into something almost homey. If I squinted and ignored the fact that it was still a basement.
I grabbed my tote bag, my empty lunch container, thanks to Tamika “borrowing” half my sandwich.The notebook where I tracked both work progress and personal budgeting, and thedog-eared paperback I’d been reading during lunch breaks. The novel was set in Argentina, which was like tempting fate, but I couldn’t put it down. Something about revisiting places through fiction felt safer than actual memories.
The main office was dark when I climbed the stairs. Everyone else was already gone for the day. Langston’s light was off too, his door firmly closed. Ever since he left the envelope, he’d been more distant, limiting our interactions to brief professional exchanges. The money helped more than he knew, but the awkwardness that followed almost wasn’t worth it.Almost.
I slid my key card through the reader, letting myself out the back entrance, heading to the employee parking lot. The security light flickered on as I stepped outside. My heels clicked against the asphalt, echoing in the empty lot. It was Friday evening, and I was the last to leave again.
My car, Raina’s old Honda, which she “generously” fronted me for exactly the amount of my first three paychecks, sat at the far end of the lot alone under a streetlight. As I approached, something white caught my eye perched delicately on the windshield wiper, waiting for me.
My steps slowed, then stopped altogether ten feet from the car. The air around me went still, sounds muffling as if someone pressed pause on the world.
No.
My lungs forgot how to work; air stalled in my chest as my pulse quickened. It had to be a coincidence. Just a random paper crane someone left. Maybe one of the office kids, Reed’s daughter, had visited earlier today.
Yet, my hands were already shaking, palms suddenly slick with sweat as memories crashed over me like a wave, dragging me under.
The first crane appeared on my pillow in Lima the morning after I’d had dinner with Leo, a perfectly folded white crane, itswings spread as if preparing for flight. I’d thought it was a sweet, charming gesture from the handsome Peruvian tour guide with intense eyes and careful hands. He’d mentioned origami over drinks and appetizers, how his Japanese grandmother had taught him when he was young. I’d been impressed by the cultural blend, his ability to speak four languages, and his knowledge of the history of every building we passed.
I’d slept with him that night, drunk on pisco sours and the exhilaration of being desired by a beautiful stranger in a foreign country. He’d whispered things against my skin in a mixture of Spanish and Japanese. I assumed the crane was a thank you, a delicate memento of a night I thought would be our only one.
The second crane showed up three days later, outside my room door. I hadn’t given Leo my room number.
By the third crane left on my backpack while I was swimming at a beach two towns over, the charm had curdled into something sour. The fourth was tucked into my passport when I stopped for lunch after crossing the border into Bolivia, fear had settled deep in my gut, a constant companion.
They kept coming — outside a café in La Paz, on the sink in a public bathroom in Cusco, balanced on my shoe after I’d removed them for a temple visit. It was always the same perfect white crane, always in places he shouldn’t have known to find me.
“You are my destiny. The crane always finds its way home.” He texted from a new number after I’d blocked his third.
The memory of his voice, soft, precise, each word carefully chosen, sent goosebumps racing up my arms. I’d fled Argentina after finding a crane hanging from the ceiling fan, slowly rotating above my bed while I slept in Buenos Aires.
Now I was staring at an identical crane in a parking lot in my hometown, three thousand miles and an entire continent away from where I last saw Leo.
I forced myself to approach the car. My breath came in shallow gasps, and my eyes darted around the empty lot. Had he followed me back from South America? Was he watching me right now?
