Chapter 14: The Letter Nolan Kept

I read it standing at the kitchen table, in his flannel shirt, with the dawn coming up grey over the lake.

It was one page, in pencil.

Ruby,

You don't know me. I'm Nolan's brother. He told you I was in prison. I wasn't. I was on a boat.

Don't marry him on Saturday.

Ask him about a woman in Spokane who lost a salon.

Ask him where his money comes from.

Ask him why he never lets you read what you sign.

I should have said this in person.

I'm in Dutch Harbor until the winter.

My number is below.

Call me and I'll tell you all of it.

Russ

I looked down at the note.

Then I turned around.

He was standing by the stove with his arms folded, grim and silent.

"Nolan took this," I said.

"I figured."

"Kristen kept it."

"She kept everything."

"I never saw it."

"I know that now."

"You wrote me a warning, a week before the wedding, and I never got it."

"I wrote it twice," he said. "The first time I tore it up. I don't know which one this is."

I put the page down on the table very carefully.

For three weeks I had been asking myself one question about this man.

Whose side is he on, really, with the same last name and the same jaw?

Every kind thing he had done, the lock, the truck, the couch, I had turned over.

I had looked on the back of each one for Nolan's hand.

The back of it was empty.

"I thought you were his," I said.

"I know."

"I thought every good thing you did was a way of keeping me in the family."

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