Bellamy's envelopes arrived by courier the next evening, two of them, cream-colored and blank, with a printed card clipped to each that read *One true statement. Never told. Sealed by your hand.*
Alexander laid them on the long dining table between a pair of fountain pens, and then, to my surprise, he pulled out the chair at the far end for me and took the one at the other, so that twelve feet of polished wood lay between us like a border.
He had been different all day, quieter and more watchful, and I knew the difference the way I would have known a change in a column of figures, because he kept touching the inside pocket of his jacket as though something there needed reassuring.
"We should do this where we can see each other," he said.
"We are in the same room."
"I mean in a way tha
