Chapter 20: Dad Reads the Slips

My parents' rental car came up the ranch drive at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon.

I was waiting on the porch steps, and so was Ryan, one step below me, with his hands hanging between his knees.

"He might hit me," Ryan said.

"He's sixty-one years old and has a bad shoulder."

"I'd let him."

"Please don't say that to him."

The car stopped.

My mother got out first, in her good cardigan, with the folder pressed to her chest.

She looked at me, and then at Ryan, and her face crumpled.

"Oh, honey," she said.

She walked straight past me and put her arms around him.

Ryan stood stiff for a second, and then his shoulders gave.

"Mrs. Dorsey," he said into her hair. "I'm so sorry."

"I know, sweetheart. I know you are. You said it in every note."

My father got out slowly from the driver's side.

He is a tall, quiet man who spent thirty years as an engineer.

He shut the car door and stood looking at Ryan for a long time.

"Mr. Dorsey," Ryan said, and he stood up.

"Ryan."

"Sir."

"I'd like to sit down at a table," my father said. "With the papers. If that's all right."

Abuela had coffee waiting.

She watched from her chair by the window as the four of us took the kitchen table.

Kat leaned in the doorway with her arms crossed, ready to throw anyone out who raised a voice.

My mother opened the folder.

Inside were twenty-one envelopes, each one slit open along the top, each one with a slip of carbon paper still inside.

And behind them was a stack of small folded notes in a rubber band.

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