Two days after we got home, the folder arrived.
I hadn't sent it. Nobody had. It was a courier envelope, no return address, no note, containing a single xeroxed page. I recognized it immediately: the trust document, page fourteen, the article containing the Good Standing provision.
Someone had drawn a single line through it. In red ink. Clean, deliberate, all the way through the paragraph.
I stood in the kitchen and looked at it for a long time.
"Who sent it?" Owen asked, coming up behind me.
"I don't know."
"Hayes?"
"I don't think so. Hayes would have sent a copy of the amendment with a memo."
"Your mother?"
"She'd have sent a baby blanket."
He was quiet. Then he said, "Grant."
I looked at the line. Red ink through the clause. It was either a threat or a surrender, and I would
