Mrs. Parker’s face softened.
Thomas had not stayed silent out of cowardice.
He had believed he was protecting something.
Perhaps both of them.
Daniel read the final sentence.
“I will leave the music. Maybe one day the ending can simply be a song.”
Owen stared at the phone.
“That’s why he didn’t tell you.”
Mrs. Parker nodded slowly.
“But what did Marianne know?”
That became the next mystery.
Marianne Cole, we discovered, was still alive.
She was ninety-one and lived in a retirement community forty minutes away.
Mrs. Parker refused to contact her.
At least at first.
“There is no reason to bother a ninety-one-year-old woman about misplaced letters.”
Owen frowned.
“They weren’t just misplaced.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Thomas wrote ‘Marianne asked me not to.'”
“Which proves she had an opinion.”
“Mrs. Parker.”
“Owen.”
They stared at one another.
I had seen this contest before.
Owen usually won by endurance.
