I read the envelope’s contents at two in the morning.
Not because I had planned to wait that long. I had come home from the reception, changed out of the black dress, made tea I didn’t drink, and sat on my bed with the envelope in my lap for nearly an hour before I opened it. Not from fear exactly. From the recognition that once I read it, the information would be inside me permanently, changing the weight and shape of everything I thought I understood, and I wanted one more hour of the version of things I already had.
Then I opened it.
Thirty-one pages. Gerald Hale’s handwriting on some of them, precise and small, the kind of script that belonged to a man who had grown up writing by hand before keyboards made penmanship irrelevant. Photocopied documents on others, some faded at the edg
