Chapter 9: The Porch

"Where did you send them?" I asked.

We were on his back porch, in the dark, two feet apart on a bench that wasn't meant for two.

I had put on his flannel again and wrapped my mother's quilt over my knees.

He sat with his elbows on his thighs and his hands hanging between them.

"The first one went to your father's house on Cutler Street," he said.

He rubbed his jaw.

"The second went to the shop's box."

"Boone and I didn't have the shop yet."

"His father's shop. You were working the counter for him."

That was true.

I had worked the counter at nineteen, for Boone's father, before Boone took it over.

"I never got one," I said.

"I know."

"You don't know that."

"I know now." His voice was flat and tired. "I think I knew when I read the line on the laptop."

I pulled the quilt tighter.

I wanted to be angry at him.

It would have been so much simpler.

"You're telling me nine letters went missing," I said. "Nine, over how long?"

"Three years. Then I stopped."

"Why?"

"Because the ninth one went certified." He looked at his hands. "The green card came back with a signature on it."

My heart gave one hard beat.

"Whose?"

"A. Tarrant."

"I never signed anything."

"I didn't know that, did I?"

He lifted his eyes, and in the porch light I could see how tired they were.

"I was twenty-seven years old, standing in a post office in Alaska with a card that said you'd got it and never answered. So I stopped."

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