Chapter 11: The Letter

I read the whole page standing in Tom's mother's kitchen, with my crutch against the counter.

The report put the car at fifty-one miles an hour on an icy road posted for forty.

Then it quoted the statements.

The driver had been unconscious and gave none.

The rear passenger had told the trooper, on the shoulder, in a neck brace, before the ambulance came.

"I grabbed the wheel. He wasn't asleep. We were fighting about Tom's thesis, and I reached forward. I only wanted him to stop."

In the margin, a trooper had written two words in pen: Statement withdrawn.

Beneath that was a second note in a different hand.

Patient sedated. Later interview, recalled "driver nodded off." Not corroborated.

I read it a second time.

Tom's mother was crying without a sound.

"I saw her face the day it came," she said.

"I knew she'd told him something different. I knew, and I put it in a box."

"Does she know you kept it?"

"She has always known where it is."

Behind us, the swinging door opened an inch.

"Jo?" Graham said. "Everything all right? can I..."

He stopped.

He looked at the envelope in my hand, and at the old woman's face.

"What is that?"

I held it out.

I did not explain it. I did not soften it.

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