“Keep it how?” Sarah asked.
Detective Velez pointed to the envelope, not to Sarah's hands. “Photograph it. Preserve the original. Let someone examine anything inside that might help us find him.”
“You mean take it.”
“For a while, yes.”
Sarah looked at the paper against her chest. Until that morning, she had never held a single thing her father had touched on purpose for her. Now the first person who seemed willing to tell her the truth wanted her to surrender it.
Hank sat down again. “Let her read it first.”
Velez glanced at him. “I wasn't going to stop her.”
For a moment nobody moved. Then Diana opened her handbag and found a small pair of reading glasses. She put them on, took them off, and folded them again. Sarah recognized the gesture. Her mother did that when she wanted a task to keep her hands from shaking.
“Can you stay?” Sarah asked her.
Diana looked up. “Yes.”
It was not forgiveness. Both of them knew that. But Diana moved her chair a little closer, and this time the distance between them seemed like a distance people might cross.
Sarah eased the flap open. The paper inside had been folded twice. A second object dropped against her palm: a thin brass key on a loop of faded blue string.
Hank made a sound beneath his breath.
“What?” Velez asked.
He leaned forward but did not touch it. “Looks like a cabinet key. Michael had a whole drawer of those.”
Sarah set it on the table. Her father's letter began without a date.
Di, if Owen brings you this, I missed the chance to say something right. I am trying to fix a thing I should have seen sooner. I know that sounds like the start of another bad excuse. There are names in those books that do not belong to men I can talk sense into. I thought I could make them see what this would do to families. I thought knowing them meant knowing where they would stop.
Sarah paused. The handwriting was clear until the end of the first paragraph, where one line had been crossed out so heavily she could not read it.
Diana stared at the page.
Sarah continued aloud.
I have not taken the money they say I took. I made copies. That is different, though they will not see it that way. Owen knows where the first set went. I kept a second because I was scared enough to be smart for once. The little key is for what I left with your Uncle Joe. Tell him I finally found a use for that ugly green box.
“Uncle Joe?” Velez asked softly.
Diana nodded but held up one finger. Not yet.
Sarah swallowed and went on.
Peanut, if your mother is reading this to you one day, I owe her a great deal. If you are reading it yourself, I probably owe her even more. I do not know what kind of father I will be. I have a plan to be a good one, but I have had plans before. Here is what I can promise: you are wanted. You were wanted before you had a name. You were wanted the first time your mother put my hand on her belly and told me to be quiet so I would not miss you moving. Nothing I do wrong after this gets to change that.
The last sentence blurred.
Sarah stopped speaking. She could not make her throat work.
Diana put her hand on the table, palm up, without reaching any farther. After a long moment Sarah placed two fingers against it.
Velez looked down at her notes. Hank turned toward the wall.
There was one more paragraph.
Di, do not come to the shop tonight. If Hank comes, hear him out. I asked him for help because somewhere under all that noise he still knows who he is. You have always been better at telling the truth than I am. Tell our kid the good and the bad. Just make sure the kid knows I loved you both. Mike.
Sarah laid the letter flat.
Nobody tried to speak for her.
The terrible thing was not that it felt like meeting her father. It felt like missing him with a part of herself that had never been allowed to grieve. She wanted his voice. She wanted the cheap shirt he wore in the photograph. She wanted one stupid argument about music in a car, one birthday cake, one memory ordinary enough that she could have taken it for granted.