Chapter 19: Return Receipt

The clerk at the post office window had a pencil behind her ear and a stack of green cards under her thumb.

"Certified for Carrie Nash," she said. "Sign here, hon."

Eli stood on the bench by the door, sorting caps into a muffin tin.

The line behind me was four people long.

I took the pen.

Five years ago I had stood at a counter exactly like this one, holding a sonogram in an envelope.

My hand had shaken so hard that the clerk had asked if I was all right.

This time I signed my name in one line, with a small flat loop on the C.

The pen didn't shake.

I wanted to remember that.

"There you go," the clerk said, and gave me an envelope the color of old cream.

I carried it out to the Corolla and strapped Eli into his booster.

Then I sat behind the wheel in the lot and read it in the late sun, with the muffin tin rattling in the back.

The handwriting was tight and blue and as neat as a ledger.

Carrie,

You told me to put it in writing. This is all of it.

I do not have an excuse. I had reasons, and they were mine, and none of them was your son's.

I signed for your letter, and I kept it, and I let Kent believe you had gone.

I would give a great deal to go back to March of that year and hand him the envelope. I cannot.

I have withdrawn the school form myself, and told them it was forged.

I have resigned the chair and the pew, and I have mailed Becca Nolte her ring. I have stopped the man in Louisville.