He picked up the photograph and looked at it for a long moment.
Then he set it back down, on my side of the table.
“He left it for you,” he said.
“You should keep it.”
He stood, buttoned his coat, and walked to the door.
His hand on the handle, he paused.
“He was a good man,” Daniel said.
Not to me.
To the room.
To whoever needed to hear it.
“Whatever else is in that letter — he was a good man.”
The door closed behind him.
I picked up the photograph.
Thomas.
Young.
Certain.
Standing in front of a house he had bought for a woman he refused to stop believing in.
I turned it over and read the date again.
And then I noticed something I had missed the first time.
Mr.
Hale’s office was on the second floor of a building on the main street, above a pharmacy that had been there since before I was born.
The stairs were narrow.
The waiting room smelled of old paper and wood polish.
Daniel was already there when I arrived.
He was standing at the window with a paper cup of coffee he hadn’t drunk.
He turned when I came in and gave a short nod.
“He’s ready for us,” Daniel said.
Mr.
