He stopped in front of Jonah.
"Jonah Bishop?"
Jonah looked up, startled. "That's me."
"My name is Roland Ferris. I handled Mr. Whitfield's estate." He held out a thick, sealed envelope, cream-colored, Jonah's name written across the front in handwriting I recognized instantly from four years of nods and short sentences on a porch — Arthur's own hand, careful and old-fashioned, the kind of penmanship nobody teaches anymore.
"He left very specific instructions for you," Mr. Ferris said. "I'd ask that you not open this here. Come by my office tomorrow morning, if you're able. Ten o'clock. Bring your mother."
Every head in that room that had been politely looking away turned to look directly at us.
PART 3
I barely slept that night. Jonah, for his part, sat at our kitchen table with that envelope in front of him for almost two hours, turning it over in his hands without opening it, like he was afraid of what breaking that seal might set into motion.
