The Last Little Blue Envelope Read Free Page A

technique), and it was time to get dressed. She made sure the seam of her tights lined up perfectly along her toes (an often-neglected detail). Then the boots. She examined the final product in the mirror. It was . . . good. She looked good. Not like a tourist. Not like someone who was trying too hard. She looked like herself . . . maybe just a little dressier than normal.
    Quick hair check. When she got home from England in August, she felt the need to change herself a little. She had worn her hair very long for her whole life, and 80 percent of the time, she wore it in braids. The braids had become her signature, and the signature felt very tired. She impulsively chopped four inches off the bottom and dyed it a deep shade of auburn. Everyone loved the hair, but she still wasn’t used to it. She kept looking for it, expecting it to hang down lower, to get in her way when it was windy out, to be there to twist and curl when nervous. Still, it had a nice, deep shine. It was more . . . mature.
    There was one more thing to get out of the suitcase—a small present wrapped in red paper. She carefully examined it to make sure the wrapping had not been ripped. The present had been tricky. She had to get something meaningful, but not too meaningful. Something personal, but not too personal. She had searched long and hard for it, and finally found it.
    During the summer, Keith found her in Paris. They had kissed once. That had happened in a graveyard, on a stone monument shaped like an open copy of Romeo and Juliet . Copies of Romeo and Juliet were common, but the one she’d found was antique, from 1905. It had a blue leather cover and was illustrated in bright, jewel-like colors, with gold endpapers. It was the kind of thing you could give to a theater student, just because it was a nice thing for a theater student to have. And it was the kind of thing you could give to someone as a way of remembering your first kiss.
    The paper had made the trip with no damage at all. She wrapped it in a plastic bag to protect it from any rain, put it in her messenger bag, and grabbed her coat and her keys. It was time to make her second entrance into Keith’s life. This time, she was ready.

Surprises and Explanations
    The route to Keith’s house was perfectly preserved in Ginny’s memory—past Indian restaurants and dozens of newsagents, down street after street of rows of houses, all in various stages of repairs. Unlike New York, which was a city of big buildings and apartments, London was a city of houses, rows and rows of houses with little gardens in the front, houses that had known many families, known wars, known different eras and levels of wealth.
    And there it was, the house she remembered so well, the house she thought about so often. There were the cheap black blinds, askew as always. There was the gold plastic window in the front door, the trash bin out front that was always overflowing, the little stone wall, and the shabby, tiny front garden, which always seemed to grow a thin crop of crumpled candy wrappers. As a little nod to the season, a string of Christmas lights was draped somewhat haphazardly around the upper windows, strung from one window to another across the front of the house. It blinked in an irregular pattern, one that suggested to Ginny that it probably wasn’t supposed to be blinking at all.
    Out front was Keith’s small, battered white car. She peered inside the front window to see if it was as trash filled as ever. It wasn’t. He’d obviously given it a cleaning recently. Aside from two plastic bags and a few script pages on the front passenger seat, it was clutter-free. The first time Ginny saw this car, it had been stuffed with an entire theatrical set, including an inflatable palm tree (deflated, thankfully).
    There were lights on in the two upstairs windows, and the muffled beat of music escaped the glass. Someone was home. It might be Keith, or it might be David, Keith’s lovesick roommate with the