“What do you mean you weren’t finished?” she asked.
Mr. Morrison turned one final page, then reached for a sealed cream envelope that had been lying beneath the folder since we sat down. I had noticed it earlier because grief makes the mind attach itself to useless details. The envelope was thick, heavy, and addressed in my son’s handwriting.
I knew David’s handwriting before my brain could accept what it was seeing.
My son had written in a firm, practical slant, letters leaning slightly right as if they had somewhere to be. When he was seven, his teacher told me his handwriting was “aggressively determined.” He never outgrew that. Even as a man, even signing mortgage forms and birthday cards and notes taped to the refrigerator, David wrote like he was building a small fence around meaning.
Mr. Morrison broke the seal.
