"It is what my father called me," I said.
The truth came out of me before I had decided to give it, plain and small, and I watched it land on the table between us like a pebble I had carried in my pocket for years.
"He called me *wren*, because I was a quick, brown, disobedient child, and I have never told that name to another living person, and it is printed in the footer of a page that somebody cut to pieces and forgot to finish."
Alexander looked at the line under my hand, and then at me, and I saw him decline to say the obvious thing.
"Then somebody wanted it found," he said.
"Or wanted me to find it."
"Did your father have money in this fund?"
"His pension was in it," I said, and every word was true, and I felt each one close a door behind me.
He was silent for the space of th
