Red,

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Chloe

There. She waited for the pain to fade. Instead, it doubled, a thought hitting her hard: What if Red hurt like this, too? What if he was lost and struggling, still shaken by his earlier loss of control? What if he needed her and she’d turned away?

Chloe shut down her computer with a sharp click of the mouse, and cut off each treacherous mental question just as firmly. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. This was for the best.

She hoped.

She saw the notice the next day, on the building’s bulletin board. She almost dropped the post she’d come to pick up.

Superintendent Redford Morgan was leaving next month.

The words were like a fist to the gut. She’d been trying so hard not to remember his words through the door, promises she couldn’t bring herself to believe. So much for that. But she was glad—definitely glad—that he’d decided to listen to her and move on. Good for him. Good for her. Good for them both.

Chloe was shaky and distracted all the way back to her flat. Her thoughts were so busy, she almost didn’t notice the cardboard box waiting on her doorstep. She kicked it, in fact, the toe of her shoe bouncing off it as she went to put her key in the door. And somehow, the moment she saw it, she knew it was from Red.

After all, it couldn’t be anything she’d ordered—in spite of her mild dependency on internet shopping—because it was sitting right outside her front door, rather than in the post room. It had no address, either: just a word scrawled on top in black. She told herself it was some kind of care package from her parents, because they’d been known to do things like this. She could imagine her dad chuckling to himself as he left it by the door. But then she bent to pick it up and read the word scrawled on the box: Button.

She felt like a sack of useless bones after yesterday’s exertions, so she dragged the box into the hall rather than trying to pick it up. Then, once safely inside, she sat on the floor and stared at it and tried not to feel anything at all. It didn’t work. There was a hole in her chest the size of a lovestruck heart. This must be some sort of good-bye.

Good. The quicker he left, the quicker she’d never have to feel this way again.

Inside the box she found a notebook, its cover a beautiful iridescent gold. She opened it to the first page, saw lines and lines of Red’s distinctive scrawl, and slammed it shut as if she’d come across the devil’s Bible.

She should open it. Should read his good-bye, which doubtless included many apologies and would only confirm the very reasonable conclusion she’d drawn: that relationships were just too risky, and they’d both been fools to try. That she needed to be alone, because it was safer. After all, if she’d been alone these past weeks, she wouldn’t have spent last night sobbing until she lost her voice. Wouldn’t have had a reason to.

Chloe put a hand to her raw throat and reminded herself that he’d left, and he’d do it again, and it wasn’t worth the risk, and she never should’ve bothered with a man anyway, not after she’d been so comfortable without one for years.

And yet, she still couldn’t open the book.

She set it aside with the same care one might use to move a poisonous snake. There were more things in the box, hidden by a layer of tissue paper. She ripped it away to find he’d sent her favorite chocolate. Green & Black’s sea salt. Not in a fancy hamper like the ones she knew they offered online, either—just slab after slab of the stuff, as if he’d walked into a shop and bought out all their stock like a loon. The bright blue bars tugged at her heart for precisely 0.002 seconds before she steeled herself against them. This was a good-bye present. Nothing that should make her wistful or hopeful or regretful.

She put the chocolate on her coffee table so it was within reach while she worked. No use wasting it.

The next day, another box arrived, significantly smaller than the first. This time, she was thoroughly confused. It was from Red, there was no doubt of that, but what else could he possibly need to give her? It turned out to be a jar, one with tiny gold stars embedded in the glass. They twinkled when she held it up to the light, and for a second all she could think about was that night in the woods, stars in the sky, little spots of light inside their tent.

And him. Red.

The jar contained a trio of the hair ties she liked, the soft fabric ones that didn’t snag. She huffed out a laugh as she realized what he was trying to do; she never knew where her hair ties were, unless they were on her head. So he wanted her to keep them in a jar. But, she reminded herself, pushing the smile off her face, jars weren’t any use to her. Between her fibromyalgia and the amount she used her hands for work, the strength in her wrists and fingers was usually zero. It was a rare and blessed day when Chloe Brown could open a jar.

She was about to put it back in the box when she realized that it didn’t actually have a lid. Or rather, not a lid that resembled anything she’d ever seen. There was an odd, transparent-looking bubble thing around the opening, and she prodded it tentatively. It gave under her touch. She pushed just a little bit harder. And then her hand was in the jar.

She stared in amazement, her eyes catching up with what her nerve endings were trying to tell her. There was a circular band of cushioning around the jar’s rim that ballooned up to “close” it, but shrank back under pressure to let her hand in.

Maybe chocolate and a letter she refused to read could be taken as a good-bye, but this, she didn’t know how to take. This was something you gave someone to show them …

To show them you cared. Or that you loved.

Maybe she should read the note. Maybe it wouldn’t be a goodbye after all. Maybe it would be sheer magic on a sheet of paper, and it would say exactly the right thing—the thing she couldn’t even define, the thing she didn’t know existed. The thing that would erase all the hurt she’d felt and make her brave enough to do this again.

And maybe she’d run a marathon tomorrow. But she wouldn’t bet her life on that, now, would she? So she steeled herself against her heart’s fanciful interpretations, and she put the jar beside the chocolate, and she absolutely refused to open the book.

Days passed and more gifts came.

Boxes of her favorite fruit and herbal teas. A little stuffed cat that looked so like Smudge, she might possibly have cried just the tiniest bit when she saw it. And maybe, perhaps, sometimes, she slept with it beside her. But that didn’t matter, because there were no witnesses.

Next was a guide to New York City, light enough for her to carry, that gave directions using major landmarks and street signs instead of maps. Then there was a tiny, plastic pink chair, studded with little diamantés, that she realized on a bark of laughter was supposed to be Madame Chair. It was followed by a bag of marshmallows, accompanied by a handwritten recipe describing how to roast them with an oven. She could tell he’d tried to be neat with his rounded block capitals, but there was a smudge of sunset-orange paint on the back of the thick, creamy paper that made her smile. He’d drawn goofy little cartoon pictures next to each instruction.

She missed him. She missed him so much that she was starting to hate him.