Miss Morris pressed a hand to her mouth.
“I wanted to tell him,” she whispered. “When I heard he was sick, I thought about it every day.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Because you were afraid.”
She looked at me then, and for the first time, I saw not my old guidance counselor but a woman who had spent half a century making a home inside her own excuse.
“Yes,” she said. “Because I was afraid.”
The same words Thomas had written.
Fear had built the walls of our lives. One person afraid of being abandoned. Another afraid of losing control. Another afraid of disgrace. Another afraid of a girl wasting her promise.
And me?
What had I been afraid of?
Perhaps I had been afraid of looking back and finding no one there.
I picked up the envelope from the table.
“I don’t know what forgiveness looks like for this,” I said.
Miss Morris’s eyes filled.
“I don’t expect it.”
“Good,” I said, though my voice was not unkind. “Because I don’t have it to give you today.”
She nodded.
As I turned to leave, she spoke again.
“Nancy.”
I paused.
“There is something else.”
Mr. Calloway straightened.
Miss Morris looked toward the doorway, then lowered her voice.
“Mr. Whitaker kept a locked cabinet in his office. Everyone knew it. But there was another place he kept things. Not at the business. At the house.”
“Thomas’s house?”
“The old Whitaker house, yes. In the pantry wall, behind the built-in shelves. I only saw it once. Mr. Whitaker opened it when he thought I had left the room.”
“What was inside?”
“I don’t know. Papers. Envelopes. A ledger, perhaps.” She looked at me with sudden urgency. “But he kept a small red book there. I remember because he took it out and said, ‘This is where people really live, Eleanor. Not in their homes. In what they owe.’”
Mr. Calloway and I exchanged a look.
Thomas had lived in that house until his last hospitalization.
“Did Thomas know?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
On the drive back, neither Mr. Calloway nor I spoke for several minutes.
My mind was too full. Thomas following my bus. The returned letter. Miss Morris’s confession. The red book hidden behind a pantry wall.
At last, Mr. Calloway said, “There is something I need to tell you before we go further.”
I turned toward him.
“Thomas left you the house.”
The words did not reach me at first.
