Chapter 7: Six Letters

The lawyer's office was on the second floor of an old brick building on Court Street, above a shoe repair shop.

I went on Monday after school, and Kenzie came with me.

She had not asked. She had been waiting by my locker with her backpack already on.

The receptionist took one look at my face and said, "You're Hazel."

"How do you know?"

"You have her eyes," she said. "Come in. He's been waiting a long time."

The lawyer was a gray-haired man in shirtsleeves, with reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

He stood when I came in, and he did not sit again until I did.

"Miss Tindall," he said. "I have written to you six times."

I put the card on his desk, blue ink up.

He looked at the handwriting, and his throat moved.

"She gave me one of those and kept one back," he said. "I wondered if you would ever find it."

"My sister found it. My mother had it in a drawer."

"I see."

He opened a folder, and then another, and laid out six envelopes in a row.

Each one had my name on it.

Three had been stamped on the front in red: Return to Sender.

Two had come back marked Refused.

The last one had a note clipped to it, in my mother's careful handwriting.

Hazel does not wish to be contacted by this office. Please respect her wishes.

"This arrived four years ago," he said. "I called the number on the note. A woman told me you were struggling and that any news would upset you."

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