« Kevin, please. »
« I found it among my old things. Things you kept. Things you packed away and told me were just memories from when I was little. »
I looked down at the envelope again. My thumb moved over the faded ink, tracing the curve of the letter E.
« Did you read it? » I asked, although I already knew the answer.
« Every word. »
His expression changed as he said it. The anger in his eyes didn’t disappear, but something more vulnerable moved beneath it. For one terrible moment, I saw the little boy who used to climb into my bed after a nightmare, searching my face for reassurance that the world was still a safe place.
Only now he wasn’t asking me to protect him from monsters hiding beneath the bed.
He believed I was one of them.
« Open it, » he said.
I shook my head.
