While Billy Moon was following wolf tracks into the woods, Jake was at home standing under the twenty-watt bulb that illuminated the stovetop in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with Allison, reading her last journal entry while she slept. He read the words a second time, a soft dread compressing the air in his lungs.
Jake,
It’s almost 1:30 and you’re still not home. I really miss you lately. I tried to stay up to talk to you. It makes me sad that even though we ‘live together,’ I’m stuck with writing to you if I want to tell you how I feel, or even if I want to bounce something off of you like how tonight I was thinking it might do me some good to go visit my parents for a while. I haven’t called them yet, so I don’t know if I’ll go, but I was thinking of maybe leaving next week.
Seeing as I haven’t found a job yet, there’s no reason not to and with you gone all the time, there isn’t much reason for me to hang around here. Would you care if I go? I’m lonely. Maybe going home would cheer me up. Talk to you soon, I hope.
Goodnight,
Ally
His eye kept retracing that one line, Would you care if I go? It revolved in his head like a skipping record. Then a charge of anger illuminated the oppressive atmosphere within him.