I waited until Shane’s truck rolled out on its way to work.
Ten minutes later, Marlene and Tiffany came through the lobby and set off — toward the hospital, I was certain, to perform their grief for whoever would watch.
The moment they were gone, I made the call.
Chapter 8 — Forty-Five Minutes
The rapid-response moving crew I’d hired at a painful premium met me in the corridor.
Here was the detail I’d thought about all night: I never let them set foot in the unit.
I carried each box to the threshold myself, out of the empty apartment, and they loaded from the hallway — so that no one could ever claim they’d forced their way in and taken what wasn’t theirs.
In under forty-five minutes, everything I owned stood boxed and labeled in the hall.
I’d swallowed a double dose of painkillers to stay upright, and cold sweat kept beading at my temples; three times the hallway spun hard enough that I had to lean on the wallpaper until it stilled.
But it got done.