After I left the note on Briana’s computer there was nothing else for the day. The next morning, however, I found an envelope taped to my locker again. I slipped into an on-call room to read it.

She’d gotten new paper and envelopes. She said she didn’t write letters, which meant she probably got them just for this. The thought of her making that effort made me smile to myself.

Jacob,

Lieutenant Dan? Lol

I don’t have any pets, but my brother and his cat have moved in with me, so I sort of have a cat I guess? His name is Cooter. He’s really cute. My brother found him behind a dumpster by a gas station, which I’m told is where the best cats come from. Benny was a college student at the time and he lived in a house with his best friends, Brad and Justin, and they thought the name was hilarious. Now seven years later I have to make psps psps noises in my kitchen and call, “here, Cooter Cooter!” when I need to feed him.

Anyway, I’ve barely seen him in the week that he’s been here. He’s sort of freaked out being in the new place and he hides. I only know he’s alive because he does this 3:00 a.m. zoomy thing where he tears through my house and somehow gets involved with the blinds?

I cracked up.

She was funny. I could see why Zander and Gibson—well, everyone— liked her. I went back to reading.

Okay, so this is going to be super random, but stick with me. I follow this travel blogger, Vanessa Price, and she’s always got these wild stories. Once, before she was married and her husband went everywhere with her, she got locked in a tower in Ireland by this earl who thought it would be funny. She was sooo pissed. I guess towers are really drafty? Lots of bugs, not as romantic as they sound. He gave her this Shetland pony as an apology gift and she was like “thanks for the tiny horse, dick, I want my five hours back.”

I barked out a laugh.

I was just thinking, what if I sucked at apologies and instead of giving you drunk extrovert protection, I’d just given you a small horse. Don’t you feel lucky?

She drew a wide-eyed smiley face and a stick horse and signed it with the letter B.

I read this one twice before I left to start my shift. On my lunch break I grabbed a spinach wrap and some paper and wrote her back.