Chapter 22: The Note

Harriet looked up at me.

Her pearls were crooked, and her silver twist had come loose on one side.

"I suppose you've come to gloat," she said.

"No."

"Then what do you want, girl?"

"Two things."

She waited.

"The letters in that chest were written to your son by a woman in this town," I said.

"She's alive, and she's about sixty."

"I know exactly how old she is."

"Then you'll take them to her yourself.

"You'll put them in her hand and tell her why she never got an answer."

Harriet's mouth moved.

"And the second?"

"Eighty-one thousand dollars."

The crowd was still on the bridge.

Nobody had gone home, and nobody pretended to.

Harriet opened her handbag.

She took out a folded paper with a blue ribbon on it and held it for a moment with both hands.

"Your father signed this at my kitchen table," she said.

"The Trust holds it, and on Monday the Trust belongs to a cousin in Columbus."

"I know."

"Then it is not mine to give."

"It's in your handbag."

She looked at the paper.

Then she looked at my father, standing six feet behind me with my mother's hand in his.

"Mr. Keogh," said Harriet, and the whole bridge heard her.

"I have been a bad landlord, and I have been a worse neighbor."

My father didn't answer.

He took off his cap.

She tore the loan in half.

She tore it in half again.

The wind off the river took the pieces and carried them out over the rail.

They dropped into the dark.

"That was the only copy," she said. "I've never trusted a bank."

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