still not opening it

You understand the ranking. I don't. I refuse to. The stool was mine. Eleven Tuesdays, seven months, every fold of that garment bag — mine. Jolene walked out carrying my bag and Mrs. Adler said ranking like it was a fact of weather. I am not weather. I am a person who lost a client and I am not pretending that's small.

I read the text eleven times. The grammar is careful. Whoever wrote it was not angry. Give it back to the right person. Not me. The right person. So I am holding something that doesn't belong to me, by their account. I do not know if they are right. I stood at the kitchen drawer with one hand on the handle and let go and walked back to the couch. I did not decide anything. I just did not want to learn the worst thing in the dark while Robin was three feet away.

Sloane had the first envelope. She deleted her app and went to Flatbush and I don't have her number. Now I have the second one. Same apartment. Same kind of sentence. Whoever is texting me is patient enough to wait for me to figure it out. I am not figuring it out tonight.

I posted it. All of it. I wanted Jolene to read it on the train. I wanted Mrs. Adler to scroll past and feel the shape of what she did. I wanted the unknown number to know I am not hiding. I am hiding. The envelope is on the shelf behind the cutting board and I am under a throw with a reality show turned low and I am not looking at it.

I did not call Camille. I still haven't told her what I saw at the boathouse. The moment I say it, it becomes a thing, and I am not ready for a thing. I am saving everything for later. The stool. The text. Sloane. My whole life is a drawer I keep not opening.

Robin said I look like I've seen a ghost. I have. She was carrying my bag.

Tomorrow I have to be in Tribeca by noon. I wonder if the key fits anything there. I wonder if the ranking follows me back through the door.

I am going to bed. I am not opening it.