AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It might have run out of battery,” Maggie said. “I meant to charge it.”
“Haven’t I told you to charge it every night? Then you won’t forget to charge it.”
“Oh, Bossy Levi speaks.” Maggie was about to sit down on the couch when she gripped her tummy and ran back into her bedroom to the bathroom.
Levi checked the tracker app on his phone. After Maggie had misplaced her phone at church one day, she agreed to let Levi install a tracker on her phone.
The tracker told Levi that the phone was in the sunroom. He made his way through the maze of packing boxes to the sunroom. These boxes were starting to bother him. They were marked with different locations of the house. Kitchen, bathroom, hallway, library, closet. Where was Maggie going?
One thing at a time.
First, he had to find Maggie’s phone.
In a far corner of the sunroom was a small writing desk with a lamp on top. In the daytime, it overlooked the same herb garden he could see from the kitchen window.
He recognized that writing desk. It used to belong to Aunt Marie. When they moved to the Savannah Senior Living Resort on Tybee Island, they had to downsize their condominium. Aunt Marie offered her old writing desk to Levi, and he accepted it.
A few years later when Levi started working at the Midtown Chapel warehouse and became fast friends with Maggie and her brother, Malachi, he knew he wanted to give them the desk as a sign of their enduring friendship.
On top of the writing desk was a closed journal on top of a Bible. Next to that was Maggie’s phone. Levi didn’t open the journal because it had Maggie’s name etched on the cover. Privacy mattered to him.
When he lifted up the phone, there was a small pink Post-It note underneath, stuck to the blotter desktop.
He didn’t mean to read the apparent note-to-self, but there it was, in Maggie’s best cursive handwriting. They were words that Levi didn’t want to see or hear.
Say goodbye to Levi.
“What does that mean? Where is she going?” Levi mumbled to himself as he looked for the phone’s charging cable. He found it in the small front drawer of the desk. It was hot pink in color. He knew it wasn’t Maggie’s favorite color, but he suspected that she had probably bought it because the color would pop out when she looked for it.
Maggie was practical like that.
What about saying goodbye to him? Why must she leave him? Even if he were dating Forsythia—or anyone else—why couldn’t he still be best friends with Maggie?
Next to the table was a small trash can with a liner in it. Levi picked it up and took it with him.
When he returned to the living room, Maggie was sobbing into her blanket. She was facing the back cushion, and her shoulders were shuddering.
Levi put the phone and small trash can down and went to Maggie.
The couch seat was wide and could fit two adults side by side. Levi sat down at the edge of it and put his hand on her shoulder.
She stiffened. Wiped her eyes and went silent.
“Mags,” Levi said softly.
No reply.
“Maggie.” Levi tried again.
Slowly, she turned to face him. Her eyes were red. “I hate being sick.”
“I know.” He rubbed her arm.
“It’s three in the morning and if we go to urgent care and then to the pharmacy, we won’t be back for a while. And then I’d only get a few hours of sleep and I may have to miss church this morning. I hate missing church.”
“I know. We can livestream. Make technology work.”
“We?” Maggie’s eyes widened. “You’re not sick. You need to physically go to church if at all possible.”
