Chapter 24: Yellow Tabs

The new packet came on the first Monday of March, in a plain gray box.

Yellow tabs stuck out of the side.

I carried it to the kitchen table and put the kettle on.

Max was across from me with his atlas, and Caleb was at the stove, burning the toast with great dignity.

"It's the pages, Mama," Max said, without looking up.

"It's the pages."

"You read them all."

"I read them all."

I took a pencil out of the jar, and I began at page one.

I read the first quarter's numbers, and I read the notes on the warehouse in Newark.

I wrote two questions in the margin about a fuel contract, and one about a driver's pension.

In the old days I would have signed on the yellow tab and gone to bed.

Now the tab was a place to start.

Caleb set a plate of dark toast at my elbow and said nothing.

When I looked up at the end of the second hour, the sun had gone off the kitchen wall.

Max had fallen asleep on the atlas, with his red headphones askew.

Landon had written to Max twice since the winter.

The letters sat unopened in Patricia's desk until Max said he wanted to hear one.

She read it aloud in the sunroom with her glasses on the end of her nose.

It said that his father was sorry and was working in a warehouse in New Jersey.

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