Chapter 13: What He Sent

Linnea's POV

I was going to drive to the historical society on Saturday and ask for the box myself.

I had it planned down to the coffee.

On Thursday the mail came first.

The carrier left a padded envelope on the porch rail, and my name was on it in Soren's handwriting.

Under my name he had written one more line: "Post office, not a courier. Burn it if it breaks your rule."

I stood there with my good hand on the envelope for a long time.

Then I took it out to the end of the planks, where the wind came off the lake, and sat down on the wet boards and opened it.

There were three things inside.

The first was a photocopy of a page from a notebook, in a hard slanted hand.

I read the line about a boy off the end of a dock.

I read the line about a girl called A., nine, who was brave.

Three lines lower, much smaller, I read my own name.

L. Holm, age 10, cabin 6. Wet to the waist. Blowing whistle during free swim.

Dismissal tomorrow a.m.

The second was a school photograph, curled at the corners, of a ten-year-old with a gap in her front teeth.

She was grinning at the camera, and the whistle hung on a cord at her chest.

I knew that gap.

I had spent a whole year trying to whistle through it.

The third was a letter, one page, in pencil.

"Linnea,

I was eight. I remember cold water, a sharp sound, and hands on my back. I was told for twenty-three years whose hands.

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