She opened the cabinet door under the sink and reached in the dark past the unused bottles of shampoo, conditioner and mud masks, then inside a tampon box, to a crinkle of paper. The papers felt fragile, broken in her hand, and she pulled them gently from the box she’d stuffed them into while in a panic—wanting to put them in the last place Phil would ever look. She shuffled into the commode closet, closed the door, slammed the toilet lid down, then sat on it. She opened the papers and pieced them together like an ancient puzzle.

She ordered the notes according to the dates on the top left corners, then began to read. She recognized his handwriting with a jolt of electric memory through her body—the slant of his lines, the straight-out stick of the K. Then and—God help her, now—even his handwriting was too strong, too . . . much. A single written note sent her slack.

Her acid-filled stomach growled as she leaned back on the tank of the commode. How romantic, reading his twenty-five-year-old notes on a toilet.

Amy,

Have been in accident. Am okay. Arrested. Please come. Contact below lawyer for information.

Nick

No information was attached and she assumed Eliza was supposed to have added how and where to contact him. She read the note again, then again. She attempted to feel, discern, what she would have felt then, in her dorm room, empty and howling inside, wondering where he was. Would this note have comforted her, panicked her? Sent her to Costa Rica? He gave no information about why he was arrested.

Knowing now what she didn’t understand then, she couldn’t find her past and genuine response. It was all too far away, too remote—something vaguely seen on the horizon—and the more she tried to focus on the feeling, the more it faded, disappearing into the thin line between water and sky.

She pieced together the second note and read.

Amy,

Please come. Am innocent. Need your help. Call below lawyer.

Nick

A rising emotion that needed a name beyond sorrow overcame her. He’d needed her. He’d wanted her to come, begged her—Please come. The pain she felt when he didn’t return must have been nothing compared to what he felt when he believed she’d read these words and failed to respond. She wanted to comfort him, tell him she would have run, not walked, to the nearest airport. She wanted to heal a wound long since scarred over.

She groaned and remembered staring out the window of her home, telling her mother she was sick, too sick to come down to dinner—again. She had been desperate for someone, anyone to call and tell her where Nick was, why he hadn’t returned to her. She hadn’t given up and, dear God, neither had he.