Chapter 78:
I write the letter that afternoon.
It takes four hours and three cups of coffee and two walks around the block. Miss Ada sits at the bar the whole time with her reading glasses on and her pencil out and she doesn't say a word until I'm done.
Then she reads it.
And then she reads it again.
"This is good," she says.
"It's not."
"It's good." She puts it down. "You want to know why?"
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't say one word about Margaret Sterling." Miss Ada taps the paper. "Not one. It says 'my mother' and it means Ellie Bennett and that's it. It doesn't give that woman one inch of page."
I look at the letter.
My mother's name was Ellie Bennett. She was five foot two and she had a garden hat and she never got a tomato out of the seeds Ruthie gave her except one year. One
