Chapter 10: Raking Light

I sat cross-legged on Rafe Corliss's carpet with his bedside lamp in my hands.

The notebook lay open on my knee, green and spiral-bound, every written page cut out at the spine.

At nineteen I'd rubbed pencil across the first clean page and raised three ghost lines.

Mr. C.

O.R. 4.

Dr. O says.

I had only just found a name for the C and a name for the O.

I took off the shade.

I held the bare bulb low and to the side, so the light skimmed across the paper at a flat angle.

I tilted the first clean page until the shallow dents threw shadows.

Words rose up out of the white.

My mother's handwriting.

It was round and fast, slanting hard to the right, with a loop on every y.

I had not seen it in fourteen years.

I read it with my phone camera held steady over the page, and I read it again.

Tues. 4/18.

Mr. C's boy. O.R. 4, 11 pm.

Left kidney. Dr. O says it's routine, three days off at most.

$400,000 to the school account.

For Pip.

Not telling Pip. Tell her double shift.

A.P. says it's the best thing a person can do. She says it's a gift to the whole family.

Under it, much fainter, a line she had written and pressed hard to cross out.

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