"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
One look, and the easy looseness drains out of his shoulders.
"What happened?"
I should lie. The lie is right there, already shaped to my mouth.Nothing. I needed clothes. The apartment's drafty.
"The 413 number," I say.
Cole goes still. One second he is leaning against the doorframe; the next, he is upright, weight centered, hands out of his pockets.
"A letter this time. On the floor outside my door. Hand-delivered."
His jaw tightens, the muscle jumping once. "What did it say?"
"I didn't open it."
"Maya—"
"It has my old name on it, Cole. The sealed one."
The color leaves his face. Cole was in the back seat because Richard would not leave his thirteen-year-old son alone in the house at midnight. He stayed awake the entire drive. When Suzanne climbed into the passenger seat with a split lip and I climbed in beside him with a garbage bag, he stayed awake then, too. Without saying a word, he gave me his jacket. I have been wearing his jackets ever since.
"Where is it?" he says.
His voice drops into the register he uses when the room has narrowed to a single problem, the same voice his father uses. The Maddox frequency.
"In the bag."
"Can I see it?"
"The outside. I'm not opening it."
I unzip the bag and pull the envelope out by its corner, sleeve still over my fingers. I hold it up. White. Standard. Block letters. The name I do not answer to anymore.
Cole takes in the handwriting and the name. His throat works.
"He knows where you live."
"Yes."
"How long have the calls been going on?"
"Since early March. Seven. Maybe eight. Six-second silences. I delete them."
He goes quiet. The silence between us has a different weight than the silences in the living room. This one carries the night I climbed into his father's car with a garbage bag.
"You've been coming here," he says.
"Yes."
"The Monday with the heat. The Wednesday deadline."
"The heat was real. The deadline was real."
"And last night was the third time this week."
