The Last Thing He Told Me, Laura Dave [graded readers txt] 📗

Maybe I was the one who said it in my message to Owen. Are you stuck at The Shop? It’s possible. But then I hear the rest of the report, coming from the NPR host’s slick, grippy voice.

“Today’s raid was the culmination of a fourteen-month investigation by the SEC and the FBI into the software start-up’s business practices. We can confirm that The Shop’s CEO, Avett Thompson, is in custody. Expected charges include embezzlement and fraud. Sources close to the investigation have told NPR that, quote, there is evidence Thompson planned to flee the country and had set up a residence in Dubai. Other indictments of senior staff are expected to be handed down shortly.”

The Shop. She is talking about The Shop.

How is this possible? Owen is honored to work there. Owen has used that word. Honored. He told me that he took a salary cut to join them early on. Nearly everyone there had taken a salary cut, leaving bigger companies behind—Google, Facebook, Twitter—leaving big money behind, agreeing to stock options in lieu of traditional compensation.

Didn’t Owen tell me they did this because they believed in the technology The Shop was developing? They aren’t Enron. Theranos. They are a software company. They were building software tools set to privatize online life—helping people control what was made available about them, providing child-easy ways to erase an embarrassing image, make a website all but disappear. They wanted to be a part of revolutionizing online privacy. They wanted to make a positive difference.

How could there be fraud in that?

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.

I consider myself to be pretty unflappable. You could say that how I grew up demanded it. So, there are only two other times in my life that I’ve felt this exact way: the day I realized my mother wasn’t coming back and the day my grandfather died. But looking back and forth between Owen’s note and the obscene amount of money he’s left, I feel it happening again. How do I explain the feeling? Like my insides need to get out. One way or another. And I know if there is ever a moment I could vomit all over the place, it’s now.

Which is what I do.

We pull up to our parking spot in front of the docks.

We’ve kept the car windows wide open for the duration of the ride and I’m still holding a tissue over my mouth.

“Do you feel like you’re going to hurl again?” Bailey asks.

I shake my head, trying to convince myself as much as I’m trying to convince her. “I’m fine,” I say.

“ ’Cause this could help…” Bailey says.

I look over to see her pull a joint out of her sweater pocket. She holds it out for me to take.

“Where did you get that?” I say.

“It’s legal in California,” she says.

Is that an answer? Is it even true for a sixteen-year-old?

Maybe she doesn’t want to give me the answer, especially when I’m guessing she got the joint from Bobby. Bobby is more or less Bailey’s boyfriend. He’s a senior at her school and on the surface he’s a good guy, if a bit nerdy: University of Chicago bound, head of student government. No purple streaks in his hair. But there is something about him Owen doesn’t trust. And while I want to write off Owen’s dislike to overprotection, it doesn’t help that Bobby encourages Bailey’s disdain toward me. Sometimes after spending