The Last Thing He Told Me

The host goes to commercial and I reach for my phone, flipping to Apple News.

But just as I’m pulling up CNN’s business page, Bailey comes out of the school. She has a bag swung over her shoulder and a needy look on her face that I don’t recognize, especially directed at me.

Instinctively, I turn the radio off, put my phone down.

Protect her.

Bailey gets in the car quickly. She drops into the driver’s seat and buckles herself in. She doesn’t say hello to me. She doesn’t even turn her head to look in my direction.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She shakes her head, her purple hair falling out from behind her ears. I expect her to make a snide remark—Do I look okay? But she stays quiet.

“Bailey?” I say.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going on…”

This is when I notice it. The bag she has with her isn’t her messenger bag. It is a duffel bag. It’s a large black duffel bag, which she cradles in her lap, gently, like it’s a baby.

“What is that?” I say.

“Take a look,” she says.

The way she says it makes me not want to look. But I don’t have much of a choice. Bailey hurls the duffel bag onto my lap.

“Go on. Look, Hannah.”

I pull back the zipper just a bit and money starts spilling out. Rolls and rolls of money, hundreds of hundred-dollar bills tied together with string. Heavy, limitless.

“Bailey,” I whisper. “Where did you get this?”

“My father left it in my locker,” she says.

I look at her in disbelief, my heart starting to race. “How do you know?” I say.

Bailey hands me a note, more like tosses it in my general direction. “Call it a good guess,” she says.

I pick the note up off my lap. It’s on a sheet from a yellow legal pad. It is Owen’s second note that day, on that piece of yellow legal paper.

The other half of my note. BAILEY is written on the front of hers, underlined for her twice.

Bailey,

I can’t help this make sense. I’m so sorry. You know what matters about me.

And you know what matters about yourself. Please hold on to it.

Help Hannah. Do what she tells you.

She loves you. We both do.

You are my whole life,

Dad

My eyes focus on the note until the words start to blur. And I can picture what preceded the meeting between Owen and the twelve-year-old in shin guards. I can picture Owen running through the school halls, running by the lockers. He was there to deliver this bag to his daughter. While he still could.

My chest starts heating up, making it harder to breathe.