Chapter 5 - The Letter from O Street
The letter arrived on a Thursday in late February, tucked between a circular for local snow removal and a tax form from the state corporation commission.
It wasn't on the heavy, cream-colored vellum with the gold-leaf crest. It was on cheap, lined legal paper, folded twice and stuffed into a plain white envelope with a Virginia postmark. The handwriting was shaky, the loops of the ms and ns flattened out by arthritis and something else—something smaller and more fragile than age.
Claire,
The house on O Street was sold this morning at public auction. The bank took the first mortgage, and the remainder went to satisfy the judgment held by the restaurant group in Georgetown. Your mother is staying with her sister in Bethesda. She has stopped using the hair dye; her hair is quite white now, much like mine.
I read your testimony in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. You spoke well. Your mother said you looked like your grandmother Harris when she argued before the state Supreme Court in nineteen-seventy-four.
I do not expect you to forgive us. That would be an unreasonable legal expectation under the circumstances.
Your father,Arthur Harris
I folded the letter once, creased it neatly with my thumb, and laid it beside the electric kettle on the kitchen counter. Outside, the first crocuses were pushing their yellow heads up through the wet mulch by the back step—small, sharp points of color against the gray Virginia mud.
The phone on the wall didn't ring. It stayed quiet, dark, and entirely empty.
May you like
For the first time since July, I walked over to the hallway basket, reached down past the place where Noah’s blue mitten used to live, and pulled out my car keys.
The engine of the Honda started on the first turn. I didn't look back at the house as I backed out of the drive. The road to the foundation office was clear, the asphalt black and wet under the noon sun, stretching straight down toward the river where the trucks were already rolling north, one by one, beneath the red eye of the new cameras.
