I looked past him to the trees, bare-limbed in the February cold. “
I let him stand for years. He chose where to walk.”
Voss studied me for a long moment. Then he set the envelope on top of the stone gatepost. “In that case, you should know what he signed.”
“I already know enough.”
“No,” Voss said. “You don’t.”
Something in his voice stopped me. He turned toward the SUV, then paused.
“Your son didn’t borrow two million dollars for a business.”
I said nothing.
He opened the passenger door. “He borrowed it to keep his wife quiet.”
Then he got in,
and the SUV rolled backward down the drive. I sat there long after it disappeared.
Ortega picked up the envelope with two fingers. “Want me to open it?”
“No,” I said. But I took it from him.
Inside, the house was still and smelled faintly of cedar. Raymond’s photograph sat on the hallway table, smiling from a summer twenty years gone. I stood in front of it with the envelope in my hand.
