Chapter 15: Dear Hazel

I did not sleep, so I took the recording to the studio at six in the morning.

The basement was empty except for the hum of the machines.

I loaded the file from last night's call and split it into two tracks.

On one track was my room, with the window and the radiator.

On the other was the phone, with Miles's voice and everything behind it.

I put the horn from each track side by side on the screen.

The first note landed on both tracks at the same moment.

That was not an echo or a recording played back.

That was one boat, heard from two places a few hundred feet apart.

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling tiles.

A man in Chicago could not hear my ferry.

I didn't cry. I felt very calm, and slightly sick, and I saved the file in three places.

When I got back to the apartment, there was an envelope in the mailbox.

It was addressed in round blue handwriting I knew from three years of notes in margins.

Whitney had spelled my name with a little curl on the H.

I carried it up the stairs holding it by the corner.

I sat at the counter and opened it with a butter knife.

It was three pages long, written on both sides.

I read the first page standing up and the rest sitting down.

She did not say she was sorry in the first paragraph.

She started with the kitchen, the day she recorded Miles, and her own hands shaking.

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