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Chapter 8
Will
If you didn’t get it then someone else did.
Jovie left me a note. How did I miss it and why am I so sure she’s telling the truth?
She never was the type to lie to me. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose, but I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t that time. If Jovie Ross left me a note and the contents of it could have changed the course of the last four years, then I have to know about it. I have to know if there’s something I could have done differently — even if ignorance is bliss.
I pull into my parents’ driveway and park my motorcycle near the garage. Jovie said she left the note on my window but what are the odds of it still being there now?
I walk around the right side of the house until I come to my window. Just looking at it from this side brings me a wave of nostalgia. All the times I snuck out of it. All the times Jovie snuck into it.
I check the outer window sill but there’s nothing there and there’s no sign of it in the grass beneath it either — not that a note would have survived the elements for four years anyway.
I reach into my pocket for my keychain and pinch the spare house key on my way up the porch.
“Mom?” I announce as I step inside.
“Will?”
I step down the hall as she pokes her head out of her office. “Hey, Mom.”
“What are you doing here?” she asks, smiling.
“I just came to check for something in my room. Do you mind?”
She shakes her head. “No, not at all. Go ahead.”
“Thanks.”
“You okay?” She tilts her head. “You’re looking a little queasy.”
“I’m fine,” I say, continuing through the house toward my old room. “No appointments today?”
“Came home for lunch,” she shouts across the hall. “I was just on my way back out.”
“Ahh.” I push open my bedroom door. “Don’t let me keep you. I’ll lock up.”
“Okay!”
I walk to the window. My dresser sits beneath it, strategically placed there in my youth to allow me or Jovie to slide in and out without making too much noise. I search the top but, just like four years ago, there’s nothing there. Just a few old pictures and a bottle of old body spray that I’m a little embarrassed to admit I used.
Did she lie?
Or did someone really find it before I could?
Or maybe…
I lower down to the floor to peek beneath the dresser.
Shit.
I push back up and pull it away from the wall. It grinds against the wooden floor as I slide it forward and scratches even more as I shove it to the side.
My stomach turns. A folded up piece of notebook paper rests on the floor. I know not to get my hopes up. Jovie left me notes all the time; maybe once a week from ages sixteen to eighteen. This could be from any one of those times but the only way I’m going to know for sure is if I pick it up right now and read it.
Every instinct in me battles it out as I bend down. Part of me thinks I should just burn it. Whatever is written here won’t change the past or make me feel any better about the last four years. But it could answer questions. Ignorance is bliss. But Jovie is, too.
