Page 78 of A Future To Remember

I swallowed hard and tried to put a bright note in my voice. “At least you got your stuff back. It’ll feel good to have a change of clothes now, huh?”

He grinned sideways. “You sayin’ I smell, Maddy?”

“Like a fetid swamp!” I laughed.

Levi pulled at the collar of his shirt and took a whiff. “I washed this shirt just last week.”

Waving a hand in front of my face, I said, “Yes, I know.”

He laughed too and gulped down the rest of his lasagna in two bites. Then he got up and walked over to the pile, grabbing a fresh T-shirt and one of the pairs of jeans. “I’ll take a shower and change. Be out in a bit. And I got the dishes. Thanks for helping me move my stuff over.”

While Levi took a shower, I finished my own dinner, setting aside the plate, and sighed contentedly.

I felt sleepy and was about to close my eyes when I heard what sounded like a chime in my mind. It was such a strange thing—to literally hear something inside my mind instead of with my ears.

I sat up, my attention focused on what I swear I’d just heard. It took a minute but, while trying to hear that chime again, my attention felt like it was being tugged to the murder binder I’d stashed to the side of the sofa. I picked it up and sat with it in my lap for a moment or two, simply allowing my intuition to direct me. When nothing happened, I flipped open the binder and began turning the pages, looking at them without any keen sense of focus. Instead, I waited to feel a sort of connection, and it wasn’t until I got to the second-to-last page that I heard that chime again, clear as a bell—pun intended—in my mind. I stopped flipping pages and looked more carefully at the page in front of me.

It was a simple, typewritten memo that basically referenced another file number and stated that further follow-up with Doug Maydole would not be happening because he’d died by suicide the day before. The date on the memo was almost exactly two months after the date of Sheriff Penton’s murder.

I stared at the memo for a long time, wondering what it was about the four sentences and the date on the page that my intuition wanted me to notice.

The door to the bathroom opened and Levi stepped out, a roll of steam following him.

I glanced up. “Feel better?”

“Feeling clean,” he said, pulling a T-shirt over his head. As he did so, the jeans he’d just purchased sank almost off his narrow hips, exposing his boxers.

He grabbed at his pants with one hand while worming his way into the T-shirt with the other, and it was a bit hilarious how much effort he was putting into the task just so I wouldn’t see his undies.

“You need a belt, my friend.”

“I know,” he said, turning away from me to get the other arm through the armhole of the T-shirt and yanking it down. “These used to fit.”

I pointed to the pile of clothes. “Those all yours?”

“Yeah. They were in a pile that looked like it’d just been dumped out of a bag. I think my folks might’ve donated them recently.”

I felt the anger well up inside me again. I wasn’t sure what it was about the fact that Levi’s parents had outright rejected him, but there was something that felt like a kinship in that between me and Levi. Maybe it was the fact that nobody had reported me missing. Certainly, if I’d had caring parents, they would’ve been looking for me by now, right?

But Cash had said there were no missing persons reports within the state that’d matched my age and description, so I wasn’t missed by either friends or family.

That was a sobering thought. What was so objectionable about me that no one cared where I was or what’d happened to me?

To my mind, there was nothing wrong or objectionable about Levi either, only the bigotry of antiquated thinking. Infuriating as it was to know that this lovely young man was being so fully rejected by an entire town, at least they would all point to a reason for it. In turn, I realized, I didn’t even have that.

After squirming into his clothes, Levi came back to the sofa and plopped down next to me. “Whatcha looking at?”

I showed him the page with the memo. He read it over my shoulder. “Why is that important?”

“I don’t know.”

His brow furrowed. “So, why’re you staring at it?”

“Because my intuition says there’s something up about it.”

“Like what?”

“If I knew that, then I wouldn’t be stuck here staring at it, Levi.”