07/16/22

Woke up this morning feeling sick. Not sure if it’s serious or just a bug from last night’s dinner. I called out of work and laid down for a few hours before getting up.

Checked the mail around lunchtime and found a small, wooden box on the front porch. No label, just a sapphire sticker with a deer head on the lid. That was strange enough, but inside there was a glass bottle filled with brown water. I dumped it out and threw it away.

Went downtown for a late lunch. I stuck with chicken soup. It was beautiful outside, and people were everywhere. Most of William Street was packed with college students from the university up the road. The river was busy too, dotted with families playing in the water and some adventurous kayakers looking for the rapids. I took a walk by the water myself before heading back home.

07/17/22

There was another package at the door today. Small, wooden, with the same blue sticker on the lid. I slid it open to find a corkscrew. It had a black, wooden handle with a silver tip. It was actually really nice. Who’s leaving these gifts for me?

Tonight, Jessa came over for dinner. I made her favorite risotto from scratch, which tasted delicious - though I think I put too much garlic in it. She brought a bottle for the night. Got to use the new corkscrew. When it got dark, we watched the constellations from the backyard until she fell asleep.

07/18/22

I tripped over another box this morning. I was in a rush to get to work. There was no time, so I scooped it up and took it with me. At my desk, I opened it up.

A fountain pen. It was a deep green with swirls of gold on the handle. I didn’t think much of it until after my meeting with Mr. Peters. He told me he’d been going over my most recent work and said I had a gift for words. He offered me an editorial position!

I slumped into my desk chair in a daze. This was the greatest moment in my career - I had to call Jessa and tell her what happened. As I hung up even more excited after hearing her voice, the pen caught my eye.

The pen was my symbol - the reward I was going to buy myself when I became an editor. I never told anyone about it, not even Jessa. It was just one of those things you do to treat yourself. But here it was, on my desk, the day I got promoted. Where did it come from?

Jessa came over after her late shift wearing her black dress, and we made the living room our dance floor. Something about her drives me crazy. Or maybe it’s everything about her. Every inch of her, every thought of her, every time I hear her voice makes me smile.

07/19/22

Woke up at 5:00am and checked the front porch. A box was there.

Inside was something I didn’t understand. There were two gold coins, as large as half-dollars, with the deer head from the box carved into them. They didn’t look real so they definitely didn’t have any real value. I put the box with the others in my closet and went back to sleep.

I awoke to my phone ringing. It was Mary, Jessa’s coworker at the hospital. She was frantic and not making a lot of sense. She said there’d been an accident. Jessa was heading in to work, and they think she took a different route to pick up coffee along the way. Whatever the reason, she was crossing the bridge downtown when bystanders say they saw her car swerve over the barrier and corkscrew into the water below. They recovered the car and rushed her to the ER. Mary said it looked bad.

I ran to the hospital and found Mary waiting outside the Emergency Room. I banged on the doors, and yelled at the nurse behind the counter - I lost all control, but I didn’t care. Two men came out and restrained me before a doctor in a white coat appeared and told them to let me go.

He ushered me through the ER to the surgery room at the end of the hall, where I watched as they pulled the sheet over her head.

After awhile the doctor started talking, but I didn’t hear him at first. He gave me his condolences and told me I could go in the room to be with her. The nurses were still finishing in the room. One of them picked up a clipboard at Jessa’s feet and realized they hadn’t put a name down for the body. She patted her pockets before she turned to me and said,

“Do you have a pen?”