Chapter 11: What He Wrote

I got into the truck because it was raining again and I did not trust my legs.

Nolan got in after me and shut his door.

We sat with our shoulders against the glass, as far apart as the cab allowed.

"Say all of it," I said.

"You'll want to hit me."

"I might. Say all of it."

So he did.

He told it without sparing himself, in the low even voice I had known for eight months and not placed.

Broderick had come into their bunk room with her first email, he said.

He'd asked Nolan to help with a first message.

It was supposed to be one message.

Then Broderick brought him her answer, and it was so good that Nolan wrote the next one.

Broderick copied them out in his own hand and mailed them.

Broderick never wrote a single line.

I listened to that and could not feel my fingers.

"The fog," I said. "The flight deck."

"Mine."

"The one about the nurse who hummed in the stairwell so she'd stop being afraid."

"I wrote that because you told me you did it."

"You wrote it as him."

"Yes."

My voice came from far away.

"You read everything I wrote to him."

"He handed me your letters. Every one."

"The one about my mother."

He closed his eyes.

"I read it three times," he said. "I didn't sleep."

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