124.

There were many nights I’d wake to find her vanished, or slipping back into bed.

There were days she barely spoke at all.

And then, in an instant, Tess was gone.

I’d been to town to have my father’s Wagoneer serviced and when I returned the house was empty and on this table, here in the middle, held down by a white bowl of berries, was her note.

“I am too various to be trusted. But I am safe and I love you. T.”

That’s all.

One of those lines she’d always kept around, stolen from a novel she loved, followed by her tired cliché of meager reassurance.