Page 147 of Hello Stranger

“Me?” I asked.

Then he gave me a wink. “We just really, really wanted you to win.”

With that, Mr. Kim started to walk off—but then he remembered something and turned back around.

“Sue tells us that 515 is bothering you?”

I felt my shoulders tighten. That was Parker. “Yes,” I said. “A lot.”

“Good news,” he said to that. “Her lease has been canceled.”

“Canceled? Why?”

He gave a little shrug. “She violated the terms.”

I couldn’t resist asking. “What terms did she violate?”

Mr. Kim looked straight at Peanut. Then he smiled at me. Then he shrugged. “No pets,” he said.

“No pets?” I asked. Was that a rule? I held very still in a caught-red-handed kind of way.

“It’s right there in the contract,” Mr. Kim said, shaking his head, like,Oh, well.“Contraband pets are grounds for termination.”

I decided to just pretend Peanut didn’t exist and to nod conversationally, like,Interesting.

Then Mr. Kim said, “Good thing I’ve never seen any other pets in this building. Have you?”

Mr. and Mr. Kim had a Havanese named Cosmo. “Never,” I said.

“That’s right,” Mr. Kim said, nodding. “And let’s keep it that way.”

THE SECOND CRAZYthing that happened was that a mysterious package arrived for me. It was a large cylindrical tube with a letter inside that fell out when I opened one end.

I knew the handwriting in half a second.

It was from my dad, on his hospital’s stationery:

Dear Sadie,

I brought this with me on the night of your show to give to you—but in all the hubbub, I forgot. I know you’ll know what it is the minute you see it, but if you have any questions or just want to talk, I’m here.

I feel like our visit the other night was a good one, and I hope you do, too.

Proud of you, sweetheart.

Love,

Dad

Well, that was intriguing.

It took me a minute to pull the contents—a rolled-up canvas—out of the tube. But once I spread it out on a table, I saw he was right.

This canvas needed no introduction.

It was the portrait my mother had been painting—of me—when she died. The portrait she’d been planning to submit to her own art show.

I’d never seen it before.

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