I didn’t open the envelope in the car.
Clara watched me get back into the passenger seat, looked at the envelope in my hands, and made the correct assessment of my expression without asking a single question. She started the engine and pulled onto the street and we drove for ten minutes in silence before she said anything at all.
“Good conversation?” she said finally.
“Significant one,” I said.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not yet.”
She nodded and kept driving and I sat with the envelope in my lap and felt the weight of it shifting slightly as the car moved, the papers inside settling against each other with the soft, dense sound of things that had been waiting a long time to be read.
We were back in Manhattan before I spoke again.
“Drop me at the library on 42nd,” I said. “I n
