Chapter 21: The Box

Constance stood in the alley with a cardboard box in both arms.

She wore a plain gray coat.

There were no pearls, no French twist, and no driver at the end of the alley.

Her silver hair had come loose on one side.

"I'd like to come in," she said. "I'll leave if you tell me to."

Otis stood behind me with the baby on his shoulder, and I felt him get ready to say no.

"Let her in," I said.

She came into the kitchen and set the box on the steel worktable.

She looked at it, and not at us.

"Holden has gone to a hotel," she said. "He won't take my calls."

"The townhouse is very large, and the telephone doesn't ring."

"I'm not sorry," I said.

"You shouldn't be."

She took off her gloves one finger at a time.

"I came to give you this. Then I'd like to ask you for something, and you may refuse."

She lifted the lid.

The box was full of envelopes.

They were cream-colored, soft with handling, and every one of them said Greta in an old man's handwriting.

My hands went cold.

"They're your grandfather's," Constance said. "He wrote one for every birthday from your twenty-first to your fortieth."

"He gave them to Holden's father in a locked case, to be handed over when you turned twenty-one."

"I turned twenty-one the year I got married."

"Yes." She didn't look away. "My husband died the winter after. I found the case in his desk. I kept it."

"You kept my grandfather's letters for six years."

"I kept them because one of them said not to sign."

Her mouth thinned.

"I told myself I was protecting my son."

Otis shifted behind me with the baby, and said nothing.

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