BONUS PART 6 — The Letter Dad Never Gave Her
“Dad,” I said, “what did you tell her I’d changed my mind about?”
“Moving out.”
I held the phone against my ear and looked at the photograph on my kitchen table. My red key ring was beside two paper cups. Patricia’s sleeve was just visible at the edge.
“Did you actually think I’d changed my mind?”
“No.”
He said it quietly. I heard a drawer slide shut on his end.
“What did you think would happen when I came home from work?”
“I thought your mother would leave it alone if she believed you’d decided to stay. I figured I could speak to you when I’d had some time to think.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
I stood up and walked to the sink. There was a spoon in the bottom of it with a little coffee dried into the bowl. I turned on the water, then turned it off again. I’d already spent enough of that conversation finding things for my hands to do.
“Can you read me the first line?” I asked.
“I thought you might want to see it yourself.”
“I do. I’d also like to hear the first line.”
Paper moved on his end of the phone.
“‘Please wait until I’ve gone to work to read this. If you ask me whether I mean it while I’m standing here, I’ll probably tell you I don’t.’”
I remembered the sentence as soon as he read it. I’d written the first half, gone downstairs for a glass of water, and come back to add the rest.
“What did Mom think happened to the letter?”
“I told her I’d put it away because you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Did she ask you to show it to her?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“What did you say?”
“I said you’d asked me to keep it between us.”
The refrigerator made a little clicking sound. I stood there listening for it to start.
“Why do you want me to show it to her on Friday?”
Dad took a moment to answer.
“I thought she ought to hear it from you.”
“She ought to hear from you that you kept it from her.”
Another long pause.
“You’re right,” he said.
I’d heard him say that a handful of times in the past year. My instinct was still to make the next part easier for him. I could suggest words. I could tell him when Mom was most likely to listen.
I looked at the clock. He’d asked if I had half an hour. We’d been talking for twenty-three minutes.
“I want the letter before Friday,” I said. “If you’re going to tell her what you did, do that before I come. I’ll decide whether I want to bring it.”
“All right.”
“Did you write on it?”
“No.”
“Did you keep the envelope?”
“I did.”
“I’d like that, too.”
He said he’d bring it over the next day. I told him he could put it through the mail slot if I wasn’t home.
After we hung up, I washed the spoon. Then I washed the cup it had come from.
I’d spent the first few months after that Christmas wondering how my parents could have looked at an empty place at their table and carried on eating. Now I was trying to remember how I’d managed to sit down at that same table, years earlier, after leaving them a letter and hearing neither of them mention it.
What came back was my mother asking whether I wanted more potatoes.
I’d said yes. I remembered that much.
Dad brought the letter the next evening.
I heard something slide through the mail slot just as I was taking dinner off the stove. By the time I got to the door, he was halfway down the stairs.
“Dad?”
He stopped.
“You can knock,” I said.
“I thought I’d give you a chance to read it.”
He had one hand on the railing. I could see he was waiting to find out whether I wanted him to come back up.
“Have you spoken to Mom?”
“This morning.”
“How did that go?”
“She asked me twice what I’d said to her back then. I gave her the words as close as I could remember them.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me to give her the afternoon. I went and bought groceries.”
He took another step, then turned.
“I remember what time you came home that day,” he said. “You were later than usual. I almost asked if you’d stayed at work because of the letter.”
“I did.”
He nodded. He’d been looking at me. Now he looked down at the stairs.
“I should’ve asked.”
I stood in the doorway with the envelope at my feet.
“I’ve got dinner on,” I said.
“Go eat. I’ll talk to you later.”
I picked up the envelope and closed the door.
Across the front, I’d written Mom and Dad. One corner was bent, and the paper had gone soft along the fold where I’d tucked the flap in. I hadn’t sealed it. I’d wanted it to be easy to open.
I carried it into the kitchen, put it beside my plate, and ate my dinner while it was still hot.
Then I took the letter out.
The first page was in blue ink. I’d switched to black halfway down the second page. I remembered the blue pen running out. I remembered shaking it so hard a drop of ink landed on my bedspread.
I read the first line Dad had read to me. Then I kept going.
I’m applying for jobs that are too far away to drive from here. If I get one, I’m going to look for an apartment. I know you’ll want to know how much it costs. I want to know that too, but every time I tell you how much I’ve saved, we end up talking about what it could pay for here. I’d like to find out what I can afford if I keep saving it for the apartment.
I’d forgotten how direct I’d been.
Farther down the page, I found a line I’d crossed out so lightly it was still easy to read.
I want to come home and tell you I got a job without having to tell you what it pays.
I sat back.
Before Christmas, when I used to think about where things with my family had started to go wrong, I usually came up with a bill. There was the first one I’d paid in full. The first one I’d put on a credit card. The first call that came while I was at work and followed me into the bathroom because I didn’t want anybody to hear.
The person who wrote this letter had seen something coming before she had a bill to point to.
On the second page, I found the part I’d forgotten completely.
I’d like one of you to ask me to show you the town if I move. There’s a bakery on the corner in the pictures I saw. I don’t know whether it’s good yet. We could find out.
I put the letter down.
Patricia had gone to that bakery with me on my first Saturday. We’d bought the coffees and one pastry to split. I remembered a bit of it falling onto the pavement before either of us got a bite.
I’d wanted to go there with my parents first.
I called Lauren.
“Can I read you something?” I asked.
“Give me a second to turn the stove down.”
I heard a lid go onto a pan. Then she said she was ready.
I read the first page. I got through the sentence about my savings easily enough. The bit about the bakery was where I had to stop and start again.
When I finished, Lauren said, “Did either of them ever ask you to show them around?”
“No. Dad helped me move. Mom came out a couple of times after that. Once she brought a winter coat I’d left behind. I showed her where I bought my groceries.”
“Did you go to the bakery?”
“No.”
Lauren let the silence sit. A few seconds later, something hissed on her stove.
“Is your dinner burning?” I asked.
“Probably.”
“You can go.”
“I can move the pan. Keep talking.”
I picked up the last page again.
“I remember leaving it under the sugar bowl,” I said. “I thought if I put it there, Mom would find it when she made coffee.”
“Who found it?”
“Dad. He made the coffee that morning.”
I remembered him doing it. I’d heard the cupboard open while I was putting my shoes on. I’d hurried out before he could see me watching from the hall.
All those years, I’d thought my mother had read it and decided I’d get over whatever had made me write it.
I’d made plenty of decisions based on what I thought that silence meant.
Now there was one I could make with the letter in my hands.
“I think I want her to read it,” I told Lauren.
“Do you want to be there?”
I looked at the first line again.
“Yes,” I said. “This time I do.”
I bought a loaf of rye on Friday because it looked good through the bakery window.
When I got to my parents’ house, Dad opened the door. He took one look at the loaf and asked if it had caraway seeds in it.
“I think so.”
“Your mother says I pick them out.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes I find them on the plate afterward.”
I handed him the bread. He carried it into the kitchen.
Mom was standing at the stove in the good shoes she’d finally bought. She’d worn them enough that the backs had softened. I could see where the leather bent when she reached for the ladle.
“Did you bring the letter?” she asked.
I had it in my bag.
“Yes.”
She lowered the heat under the soup.
“I’ve been thinking about what I remember from that day,” she said. “I remember coming downstairs and your father saying there’d been a letter. I asked him where it was. He told me you wanted him to put it away.”
I sat at the table.
“What did you think I’d written?”
“I thought you’d said something in anger about leaving. You and I had argued about the grocery money the night before.”
I remembered the argument. She’d asked if I could put in more that month. I’d asked if it would be the same the month after. She’d told me there was no way to know that yet.
“I was angry about the groceries,” I said. “I’d been thinking about the letter for weeks.”
Mom pulled out a chair.
“Your father told me that when he spoke to me yesterday.”
Dad had cut three slices of bread. He stopped with the knife flat against the cutting board.
“I said I remembered her asking me about apartments earlier that summer,” he said. “I’d forgotten I told her to wait until she knew where she’d be working.”
I remembered that, too. I’d taken it as encouragement. I’d thought he was telling me which thing to do first.
I took the envelope out of my bag and handed it to Mom.
She looked at the front.
“You used to make your capital M like that,” she said.
“I still do sometimes.”
She drew the pages out, unfolded them, and began to read.
I’d expected to watch her face. Once she started, I found I wanted to give her a little privacy. I went to the counter and took three soup bowls out of the cupboard. Dad put the knife down and got the butter.
When I brought the bowls over, Mom was reading the last page. One finger rested under the line about the bakery.
“Did you go?” she asked.
“Yes. With Patricia.”
“Was it good?”
“They made good coffee. The pastry was hard enough that we had to break it in half with our hands.”
She gave a small laugh. Then she looked down again.
“I would’ve gone with you,” she said.
I leaned against the back of my chair.
“I think you might have.”
Mom lifted her eyes.
I’d meant it. I could picture her asking what the bakery charged for a slice of cake and then buying one for each of us when I said we could share. I could also picture her calling on the way home to ask whether I could transfer money before Monday. For years, both kinds of afternoon had been possible with her.
She folded the last page back and looked at my crossed-out sentence.
“Why did you take this part out?”
“Which one?”
“About telling us how much the job paid.”
“I didn’t want Dad to think I was angry at him for asking.”
Dad leaned against the counter.
“You were angry at me for asking,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I asked anyway when you got the job.”
“You did.”
He picked up the bread knife and set it in the sink.
“I remember thinking you looked disappointed when I asked,” he said. “You’d just come in. You still had your coat on. I asked what they were paying before I’d even asked what you’d be doing.”
“I wanted to tell you they’d called me back after the first interview. I’d been sure I’d talked too much and ruined it.”
“What did you tell them?”
“About the time the copier at work jammed with somebody’s birthday card in it. I was trying to explain how I’d handled a problem. Halfway through, I realized I was telling a panel of three people how I’d got a glittery dog unstuck from a copier.”
Dad smiled.
“Did you get it out?”
“Mostly. The dog lost one ear.”
Mom laughed. She was still holding the letter.
I looked at both of them. I’d remembered that interview on my way to my first day at the new job. I’d thought about telling them once I’d settled in. Then there were always newer things to talk about.
“Why’d you keep the letter, Dad?” I asked.
He sat down.
“The first day, I put it in the drawer because I didn’t want your mother finding it while I was at work. After you moved out, I took it out one evening. I got to the part about the bakery and thought I could call and ask you about it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“By then I’d have had to tell you I’d read the letter and kept it from her. I put it back.”
Mom turned toward him.
“You told me she’d changed her mind because you wanted me to leave it alone?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think I’d do if I read it?”
“I thought you might sit down with her and work out what it would take for her to go. I wanted more time before that happened.”
Mom looked at him for a few seconds.
“I might have asked her to wait,” she said. “I’d been working out what we could afford if she stopped putting money toward groceries.”
Dad nodded. “I knew that.”
They looked at each other across the table. For a moment, I could feel the old pull to say something kind enough to give them both a way out.
The soup bubbled softly behind us.
“Can we eat?” I asked.
Mom blinked. Then she stood up and went to the stove.
“Yes. Get your bowl.”
She filled it nearly to the top. I asked for a little less because I wanted more than one slice of bread. She tipped some soup back into the pot and handed me the bowl.
We ate. Dad left a few caraway seeds on his plate. Mom saw them and glanced at me. I laughed, and he looked down to see what we’d found.
When we were finished, Mom put the letter back into its envelope and handed it to me.
“Would you let me make a copy sometime?” she asked.
I thought about it.
“I’d like to keep it with me for now.”
“All right.”
I slid it into my bag. It felt good to know where it was when I went home.
They decided to sell the house in May.
I learned about it on a Sunday afternoon when Dad called and asked if he could tell me about the smaller place they’d looked at.
“Does Mom still think it’s too far from the grocery store?” I asked.
“She timed it twice. Nine minutes on a good day, eleven if you catch the light.”
“Has she accepted that?”
“She found out there’s a bakery across the street.”
“I guess that helps.”
“She went in to see if they’d let her buy half a loaf.”
“Did they?”
“They asked which half.”
I laughed.
I was watering the basil on my windowsill. Two of the stems had grown sideways, and I’d been turning the pot every few days to see what they’d do.
“Your mother and I went through the numbers again,” he said. “We can make it work. The repairs here keep coming up one at a time, and every time we think we’ve got enough set aside, we find another thing.”
He told me about a pipe behind the downstairs bathroom wall. I remembered that pipe. You could hear it when someone filled the bathtub upstairs.
For a minute, I wondered how much the repair would cost and whether I knew anyone who could do it more cheaply.
Dad kept talking.
“We’ve got someone coming Tuesday to look at it. He gave us a range over the phone. I asked him to show me where it’s leaking before we agree to anything.”
I set the watering can down.
“Sounds good.”
“I thought so, too.”
A little pause followed. I could hear the television in the background.
“Do you want to see the new place sometime?” he asked.
“Yes. When you’ve moved in.”
“Good. Your mother’s already talking about where to put the mugs.”
“She should open the cupboards first.”
“I told her that. She said she can see them in the listing.”
We talked for another few minutes. Before he hung up, Dad asked if I’d had any thoughts about what I wanted from the house.
I’d thought about the blue-flower mug. I’d thought about the embroidered tablecloth and decided I had nowhere to put it. I’d thought about the chair beside the front door where I used to sit to tie my shoes.
What I wanted surprised me.
“Is the little shelf still in my room?” I asked.
“The one beside the window?”
“Yes.”
“I think so.”
Dad had put that shelf up when I was sixteen. One end was slightly higher than the other. Round things rolled if you put them down carelessly.
“Could I have that?”
“I can take it down for you.”
“I’d like to help.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave it up.”
After we hung up, I looked around my apartment for a place to put it.
I picked a wall before I’d even measured the shelf.
The night before I went over to take it down, Brenna called.
She’d been offered three more months at her placement. The supervisor wanted her to help with a project she’d watched them plan from the start.
“Are you going to take it?” I asked.
“I did this morning.”
I smiled. “How does that feel?”
“I bought myself lunch somewhere that puts its sandwiches on a plate. So I think pretty good.”
She told me about the project. Then she told me she’d priced the bus fare and found a route that would let her leave her car at home two days a week. She was halfway through explaining where she’d have to change buses when she stopped.
“I forgot to ask what you’re doing tomorrow,” she said.
“Going to Mom and Dad’s. I want the shelf from my room.”
“The crooked one?”
“Yes.”
“I used to put pencils on it and see how many I could get rolling at the same time.”
I’d spent years wondering how my pencils ended up behind the radiator.
“Did you ever get them out?”
“No. I was waiting for you to find them and think you were rich.”
I laughed so hard I had to put my mug down.
Brenna told me she’d come by the house the following weekend to go through her old room. She wanted the lamp with the little pull chain. She’d already asked Mom to leave the boxes alone until she got there.
“Did she agree?” I asked.
“She said she’d label them. I asked what she was going to label them if she didn’t know what was in them.”
“What did she say?”
“‘Brenna.’ Fair enough, I guess.”
After a minute, Brenna asked whether I’d read Dad’s letter.
“You mean my letter?”
“Oh. Right.” She was quiet for a second. “That sounded strange, didn’t it?”
“It did.”
I told her what I’d written about the bakery. I told her that I’d spent the whole day at work waiting to find out what would happen when I came home.
“I don’t remember that day,” she said.
“You wouldn’t. I don’t think you knew about it.”
“I remember you getting the job, though. I remember asking if your apartment would have a pool.”
“It didn’t even have a laundry room.”
“I’d have taken a pool over a laundry room at that age.”
I smiled. Then she asked a question I hadn’t expected.
“Do you want to go back to the bakery with Mom now?”
I thought about it.
“I don’t know if the bakery’s still there.”
“Would you want to find out?”
Across the room, my coat was hanging on the back of a chair. In one pocket was a grocery list. In the other, probably, the receipt for the rye bread. I tried to remember the last time I’d driven three hours for something that could have waited.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I would.”
My old room was full of boxes when I got there on Saturday.
Dad had left a path from the doorway to the window. The shelf was still in place. It held one green marble and a cardboard bookmark from the library.
“Look at that,” I said. “I used to look everywhere for that marble.”
Dad picked it up and put it on the left end of the shelf. It rolled straight to the right and dropped into his hand.
“I was sure I fixed that,” he said.
“You put a folded piece of cardboard under one of the brackets.”
He bent to look.
“It’s still there.”
I pulled it loose while he held the shelf. It was a piece of a cereal box, folded so many times that the printed side had split along the corners.
We took the screws out. I held the board and he held the bracket. Once it was down, I could see two slightly different rectangles on the wall where he’d tried to position it.
“Do you want the brackets?” he asked.
“Yes. I want to use the same ones.”
“I can give you better screws.”
“I’d take those.”
He went downstairs to find some. I stood alone in my old room for a minute.
The window stuck halfway up, as it always had. I pushed a little harder. It opened another inch and stopped. From there I could hear Mom talking to somebody in the yard. She was asking whether they wanted a pot with a crack down one side. The person said yes. Mom sounded pleased and went to get it.
I used to open that window on summer evenings and try to imagine what my own place would sound like. I’d pictured traffic, mostly. I’d had no idea there would be a refrigerator loud enough to wake me up.
I put the marble in my coat pocket and went downstairs.
Mom had three boxes on the dining table. One was marked kitchen. One was marked Brenna, in letters big enough to read from the hall. The third was empty.
“Dad says you’re taking the shelf,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What are you going to put on it?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Mom pulled a stack of dish towels from the back of a chair and began folding them. I took a seat.
“Do you remember the name of the bakery by my first apartment?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I was thinking I might go back and see whether it’s still there,” I said. “Would you want to come with me?”
The towel she was folding had red stripes down one side. She lined the stripes up before she answered.
“Yes,” she said. “When were you thinking?”
“After you’ve moved. I thought we could drive up in the morning and come back after lunch.”
“I can do that.”
She folded the towel again. One corner stuck out. She left it.
“Would you show me where you worked, too?” she asked.
I hadn’t expected her to ask.
“I can show you the building. I don’t know who’s in it now.”
“That’s all right. I’d like to see where you went.”
Dad came back with four screws in a paper envelope. He handed them to me and told me to keep the extras in case I dropped one behind something.
I shook the envelope. There were more than four screws in it.
“How many do you think I’m going to drop?”
“Depends what you’re standing on.”
Mom looked at him.
“She has a stepladder,” she said. “I’ve seen it.”
Dad laughed and went back upstairs.
I helped Mom fold the rest of the towels. She’d offered me two before I got there. I took one. It had a scorch mark near the hem from a pan I’d once set down on it while I was making dinner.
I wrapped the shelf in it before I put it in the car.
The bakery was still there.
It had a new sign and a different person behind the counter, but the front door still caught on the rubber mat when you opened it. I gave it a little shove without thinking.
Mom noticed.
“You used to come here a lot?”
“Once I got paid, yes. Fridays, usually.”
“What did you buy?”
“Coffee and one of those.”
I pointed to the apple turnovers. There were three left.
“Are those the ones you split with Patricia?”
“Yes. They look softer now.”
“Only one way to find out.”
We each bought one.
At the table by the window, Mom cut hers in half. The pastry flaked all over her plate. She ate a piece with her fingers, looked down at the crumbs, and laughed.
“You and Patricia must have made a terrible mess.”
“We ate it outside.”
“Smart.”
We sat with our coffee and watched a delivery driver try to back into the same narrow space three times. I used to sit there on Fridays with a book open in front of me. I’d read a couple of pages and then look up to see who was walking past.
I told Mom that.
“What book?” she asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you ever finish it?”
“Probably. I used to finish everything, even if I didn’t like it.”
“Do you still?”
“No. There’s one on my nightstand that’s been there for four months. I think I’m ready to admit I’m done with it.”
Mom smiled into her cup.
Afterward, we walked past my old building.
The curtains in my old apartment were white. A bicycle was locked to the railing. There was a small yellow pot on the sill that I could see from the sidewalk.
I pointed out the window.
Mom knew which one it was before my hand got all the way up.
“That’s where I stood when Dad took the picture,” she said, looking across the parking lot.
“Do you want to go over there?”
She thought about it.
“No. I can see it from here.”
We stood together for a minute. A woman came out of the building with a bag of trash in one hand and her keys in the other. She pulled the door shut with her elbow. I used to do the same thing because there was no good place to set the bag while I locked up.
“Is there anywhere else you want to show me?” Mom asked.
I took her down the street to the building where I’d worked. The sign on the front had changed. Through the window I could see a row of plants where the reception desk used to be.
I showed her where I’d parked on my first morning. I told her I’d arrived forty minutes early and spent most of it sitting in the car trying to decide when it was reasonable to go inside.
“What did you do with the forty minutes?” she asked.
“I called home. Dad answered. He told me you were still asleep.”
“I remember that. He said you sounded excited.”
“I was terrified.”
Mom smiled. “You could’ve called again when I woke up.”
“I know. I thought I’d have more to tell you after work.”
“What happened after work?”
“I went home and made eggs. Then I called, and you told me the washing machine was leaking.”
She looked at me.
“I probably did.”
“You’d put towels down and couldn’t tell whether it had stopped. I remember trying to help you work it out.”
Mom tucked her hands into her jacket pockets.
“Tell me about your first day,” she said.
I told her what I could remember. The woman who’d shown me how to work the phone. The lunch I’d brought and left in my bag because I didn’t know whether the refrigerator was for everybody. The manager who’d come by at four thirty to tell me I could go home, then come back five minutes later because I was still at my desk.
By the time I finished, we’d walked all the way back to the car.
Mom put her hand on the passenger door.
“Did you go home the second time he asked?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
We got in. I let her choose the radio station. She found one playing a song she hadn’t heard in years and left it there even after the next song came on and neither of us liked it.
About an hour into the drive, she reached into the bakery bag and found half a turnover she’d wrapped in a napkin.
“Do you want some?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She broke it in half and waited until we stopped at a light to hand me my piece.
I put the shelf up the following evening.
It took me two tries. The first time, the bracket on the right was too low. I put the green marble on it, watched it roll, and took the board down again.
When I’d finished, I set the marble in the middle.
It stayed there.
I put my letter on the shelf beside it. Then I took the letter down and put it in the drawer with the pictures of my first apartment. I wanted it somewhere I could find it without seeing it every time I walked through the room.
That left the marble and the library bookmark.
I sent Brenna a picture.
Where am I supposed to roll my pencils now? she wrote.
Buy your own shelf.
Fine. I’m making mine crooked.
I was still smiling when another message came through.
Mom just called. She invited me for dinner at the new place next month. She says everybody’s buying their own pizza because she doesn’t know what anybody likes anymore.
I wrote, I’ve liked mushrooms my whole life.
Brenna replied, She remembers. She said you’re the reason she’s making us buy our own.
I laughed and put the phone down.
A few minutes later, it rang again. This time it was Patricia.
“Did your mother tell you about the pictures?” she asked.
“What pictures?”
“The ones on my old camera card. She asked if I could find anything else from your first apartment. I found some from the Christmas dinner, too.”
I stood still beside the shelf.
Patricia went on carefully.
“There’s a short video I don’t remember taking. I must’ve thought I was taking a picture and held the button down. It starts before dinner. Most of it’s the floor.”
“Did you watch it?”
“Yes.”
“How long is it?”
“Forty-three seconds.”
I looked over at the drawer where I’d put my letter. I remembered the photograph with the white envelope and the pale blue slip beneath it. I remembered how long I’d looked at that photograph before I’d asked anyone what the envelope held.
“What’s in the video?” I asked.
“At the beginning, I’m trying to get everybody to move closer together. Then somebody rings the doorbell.”
She stopped. I could hear her breathing.
“Who was at the door?”
“You were.”
I thought about the bags I’d left on the porch. I’d carried them up in two trips. On the second trip, I’d pressed the bell and stood there for a minute, hoping someone would come out so I could say Merry Christmas in person.
“Nobody answered,” I said.
“I know,” Patricia said. “I’d gone to the kitchen by then. I left the camera on the hall table. It caught what happened after I walked away.”
My hand found the edge of the shelf.
“Who’s in it?”
“Your father walks into the hall. He puts his hand on the doorknob.”
I remembered standing outside, rubbing the tips of my fingers together through my gloves. I’d been able to hear people in the house. I’d thought they were watching television too loudly to hear the bell.
“What does he do?” I asked.
“He waits.”
I closed my eyes.
“Do you want me to send it?” Patricia asked.
I looked at the marble. It hadn’t moved.
“Tell me one thing first,” I said. “Did he know it was me?”
Patricia didn’t answer right away.
Then she said, “He says your name before you ring the bell a second time.”
END OF BONUS PART 6
