Lark’s hands stilled on the tape dispenser. Something flickered across her face—recognition, maybe. The look of someone who knew what rebuilding cost.
“That sounds exactly right,” she said. “Maybe you could include some of the Pawsitive animals as well.”
I was expecting her to press for more details, but I was glad when she didn’t. I didn’t have everything worked out just yet. I just knew something was forming in my gut.
We kept working. Kitchen, bathroom—it went fast. I’d never accumulated much.
I paused at the bookshelf.
Something felt off. It had since I’d walked in, but now I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
The apartment looked normal—same sparse furniture, same bare walls. Nothing obviously disturbed. And yet…
My fingers hovered over the book spines. Poetry, novels, photography books. I knew this shelf. I’d arranged it myself.
The Rumi collection was in the wrong place. Middle shelf instead of the far left. The Annie Leibovitz book had shifted two spaces down.
You’re being paranoid. You probably moved them last time and forgot.
But I always arranged them the same way. Always.
My gaze drifted to the desk. The drawer wasn’t quite closed—a quarter inch of shadow where wood didn’t meet frame. I neverleft it like that. Open drawers made me anxious. I always pushed them closed.
Paranoid.
I tried to believe it. I forced myself to breathe. I was high-strung because of Coop. There was nothing going on here.
The bedroom closet was the last stop. I pushed past winter coats, grabbed a pair of boots I actually liked, and reached up to the top shelf for the shoebox I’d kept tucked in the back corner.
Plain brown cardboard. Nothing special about it. But it held letters from when Coop was deployed. Ticket stubs from our first date. A pressed flower from the bouquet he’d brought me for our one-year anniversary.
I’d kept it where I wouldn’t have to see it every day, but I’d never been able to force myself to throw the stuff away. Now I was glad. I wanted to show all of it to Coop. To relive the memories with him.
I stretched up and reached for the familiar spot.
Nothing.
My hand swept across empty shelf. Just blank space where the box should have been.
That wasn’t right. Had I moved it? I didn’t remember moving it, but maybe I had.
I checked the other end of the shelf. Pulled down a box of old tax documents to see behind it. Dropped to my knees and looked under the bed, then the other closet, then back to the first one.
“Mia?” Lark appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on? What are you looking for?”
“A box.” I knelt and yanked open the bottom dresser drawers, knowing it wouldn’t be there, but checking anyway. “A shoebox. It’s always on that shelf. It’s been there since I moved in.”
“What’s in it?”
“It was where I kept stuff from when Coop and I dated before. It’s always been in the top corner of my closet, but now it’s not there.”
Lark knelt beside me. “Could you have moved it? Or maybe you threw it out and don’t remember.”
“No. I didn’t touch it.” My voice cracked. “I talked to my therapist about that box. She told me not to force getting rid of it—that I’d know when I was ready to let go. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t move it.”
“Could you have taken it to Garnet Bend? Maybe when you grabbed clothes last week?”
“No. I didn’t—” I stopped. Had I? The trip had been rushed. I’d been distracted, thinking about Coop, about where our relationship was going. Maybe I’d grabbed it without realizing.
