Wade’s face changed.
It was slight.
But grief entered it from somewhere old.
“He wasn’t exactly good company,” he said.
The bitterness of that almost made me laugh. Instead I looked back at the table, at the medical files, the receipts, the hospital band, all the evidence of a life being dismantled twenty-two miles from mine.
“Did he ask about me?”
Wade did not answer fast enough.
I hated myself for asking.
I hated him for making silence meaningful.
“Every day,” he said.
I turned away.
No one spoke for a while.
The next crate was labeled M, just the single letter. Inside were envelopes, dozens of them, some sealed, some not. My name appeared again and again in Randall’s handwriting. Meryl. M. Mrs. Mercer, after we were no longer legally anything. One envelope said DON’T SEND THIS, YOU SELFISH BASTARD across the front in thick black marker.
