Chapter 10: Dear Mom

I walked off Brice's stage with my son's hand in mine, and nobody stopped us.

Three cameras were on us, and Brice could not grab a boy off his mother in front of three cameras.

"Let them have a minute," he said to the crowd, with his jaw clenched.

I carried that grin on my back all the way across the lot.

Roz's green van sat idling at the exit with the side door open.

Clyde stood beside it, holding the door.

Milo looked up at me.

"I don't want to go back," he said.

"Get in," I said. "Just to sit. Just for a minute."

He climbed in.

I climbed in after him, and Roz pulled out before the door finished sliding shut.

She drove two blocks and parked behind the shuttered bank.

Nobody spoke.

Clyde sat on the bench across from us with his hands between his knees.

I looked down at the folded paper in my fist.

It was soft from being held and unfolded so many times, and the creases had gone white.

I opened it on my knee.

The handwriting was a child's, in pencil, pressed hard.

*Dear Mom,*

*I said it like Cassidy told me.*

*She said if I told the police you pushed her, you would come home after.*

*She said it was a game for grown ups and you would be home for supper.*

*You did not come home. I am sorry. I am so sorry.*

*I think about it every day.*

*Dad was in the hall by the kitchen when she was telling me. I saw his shoes under the door.*

*He heard. He did not say it was not true.*

*I wrote you 36 letters. I gave them to Cassidy to mail. I do not think she mailed them.*

*Please do not be mad at me.*

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