CHAPTER SEVEN: DUTCH'S MESSAGE
298 Words
The envelope arrived at the Sugar & Salt kitchen on Thursday, slid under the door.
No return address. Her name on the front in block letters. Inside, a single index card with eight words written in the same hand.
Some roads only go one way. Be careful.
No signature. But she knew the handwriting was Dutch's — she had seen it on the payment receipt from the festival, the careful print of a man who had learned to write late and had never forgotten to be deliberate about it.
She stood with the card in her hand for a long time.
Then she called Rafe.
He picked up on the second ring, which surprised her. She had expected voicemail.
"Dutch sent me a note. Without preamble."
A pause. Just one beat, but she felt it.
"What did it say?"
"That some roads only go one way. That I should be careful."
Another pause. Longer.
"He's not wrong."
"I know he's not wrong."
"Then why are you calling me?"
She sat down on the edge of the prep table. Outside the kitchen window, Hollow Creek was going about its Thursday — a delivery truck, two women with strollers, the barbershop guy sweeping his steps.
"Because I wanted to hear what you'd say."
"And?"
"You confirmed it. Which is either honest or a warning."
"Both. Quietly. Both."
She nodded at the window, at the ordinary street, at the life she had built that was entirely separate from motorcycles and rivalries and index cards slid under doors.
"First Sunday is in three weeks."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Yeah. It is."
She hung up and put Dutch's card in the drawer under the register, where she kept things she wasn't ready to throw away but couldn't look at every day.
- Writer
