Four: when Ray told me to do it quietly, my first instinct was still a scene.
I said how do we bury them. Out loud, to a retired investigator, in an office.
I had already pictured it. I had pictured the envelope on the table and his face going white and me saying something I’d rehearsed.
And a professional had to tell me, flatly, that the thing I wanted was a thing that would cost my granddaughter and buy me nothing except a feeling.
I wanted my moment more than I wanted a clean file. For about four days, that was true about me.
Five: and this is the one — Laura asked me for help four years before any of this, and I gave her advice.
Fall of the year before the accident. She came by the store on a weekday afternoon, which she never did, and she sat on the stool behind the register where she used to do her homework in high school.
