He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 265

Chapter 265

Maya’s POV

The apartment had found its rhythm.

Not the rhythm of the house…. the house had been the rhythm of a life with more space than it needed, with rooms that existed for purposes that the life inside them occasionally fulfilled.

We had made the choices.

The nursery first….

Alex had been insistent about this….

He had spent most of the afternoon in the spare bedroom.

I had made dinner.

We had laughed over small things.

Not performed laughter…. the real kind, the kind that arrived from the accumulated small absurdities of two people in a small space assembling furniture and making meals and arguing about where the cribs should go.

“They can’t go side by side,” Alex said.

“They need to be side by side,” I said. “They’ve been side by side for five months.”

“They’ll wake each other,” he said.

“They already wake each other,” I said. “They do it now. I can tell.”

He had looked at me with the expression he wore when he was about to say something specific and was calibrating the delivery.

“You can’t tell,” he said.

“I can absolutely tell,” I said. “The boy is restless at night and the girl is calm and the boy disturbs the girl and the girl communicates her displeasure.”

“From inside,” he said.

“From inside,” I confirmed.

The laugh arrived before either of us had decided to let it.

After dinner.

The small table in the kitchen, which was the right size for two people in a way that the dining table in the house had never been… the house table had been the right size for the life we had been performing and the apartment table was the right size for the life we were actually living.

Tea.

The files were closed for the evening,

Reeves had said: give it twenty-four hours. The investigation was moving. Mason had not been found. The forty-third floor materials were being processed. The accounts were in the process of being unfrozen.

Twenty-four hours

We were inside the twenty-four hours.

And for the first time in weeks, the twenty four hours felt like something that could be inhabited rather than endured.

The doorbell.

Alex frowned.

Not with alarm….

“We’re not expecting anyone or are we?” he asked said.

“No,” I said.

I stood

The hallway.

The door.

I opened it.

No one.

The corridor empty…..

No person

On the welcome mat… a package.

Plain brown.

Not from a delivery service….. no label, no stamp, no return address, no barcode.

I looked down the corridor in both directions.

Empty

I brought it inside.

Set it on the kitchen table.

Alex looked at it….

At me.

At the package.

“No label,” he said.

“No label,” I confirmed.

I opened it.

The photograph was on top.

My father.

Standing beside another man.

Both of them holding glasses.

The posture of two people at an occasion…not a formal occasion

My father’s face.

+15 Bonus

_Cleat

Exactly as I remembered I…

The other man’s face.

Scratched.

Not accidentally…. deliberately.

Scratched beyond recognition.

Just the body, the posture, the hand holding the glass.

No face.

I looked at it for a long time

At my father.

At the unknown man beside him.

At the celebration they were apparently in the middle of.

At the scratched face.

At the paper beneath the photograph.

The note.

Folded once…

I opened it.

Handwriting.

Not my father’s…. I knew my father’s handwriting

You’re looking in the wrong place.

I read it.

The man who smiled beside your father was far more dangerous than the man everyone blamed.

I read it again.

Find him, and you’ll find the truth

Three sentences.

No signature.

I looked up.

At Alex

He was looking at the note.

At the photograph.

At my face, which was doing something I was not managing

+15 Bonus

+15 Bonus

My hands

“This changes everything” Lsaid.

Not loudly

To the photograph.

To the note.

Alex took the photograph.

Held it under the light.

Looked at the scratched area

“Someone knew who this was,” he said. “And removed the face specifically.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Before sending it to us,” he said

“Yes,” I said.

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