“What was in it?”
“I never read them.”
“Did he say?”
“No.”
Owen asked, “Did Daniel find it?”
Marianne shook her head.
That evening, Mrs. Parker finally read the recovered letters.
Some were funny.
Some were ordinary.
Thomas wrote about Boston rain, terrible coffee, students who sang too loudly, and an upstairs neighbor who practiced trumpet at midnight.
The final recovered letter was dated February 1975.
At the bottom, Thomas had written:
“I’ve started the last section of your song. I think I know what it needs now.”
Owen counted quietly.
“There should be one after this.”
Mrs. Parker nodded.
“The seventh.”
The letter Thomas had taken back.
The one he considered important enough to carry for twenty-seven years.
And perhaps, somewhere, for the rest of his life.
Two days later Daniel phoned again.
His voice sounded strange.
“I found something.”
Mrs. Parker gripped the receiver.
“The seventh letter?”
“No.”
A pause.
