The date in the top corner was March 9, 2003, underlined twice the way Elaine Whitfield underlined every note she ever stuck on a refrigerator.
The sheet on
top was in Megan’s handwriting.
Blue ballpoint, rushed.
“Thomas, read the letter first.
Megan.”
I flipped the sheet over.
The back was blank.
I looked at my watch.
Six twenty.
The statement for my paid-off van loan was still clipped to the fridge under a magnet, thirty-eight thousand four hundred dollars, balance zero.
I had looked at that zero plenty of times.
That night it just sat there.
I worked my thumb under the flap of my mother’s envelope.
The first line was my name.
“Thomas, if you’re reading this,
I’m gone, and I need you to hear this from me.”
Below it, in the same slant she used for grocery lists, she had written, “Don’t let Ray keep you for the trust money.
