Chapter 4: The Bridge
Ruiz drove me to the bridge on a morning with low wind.
I had not stood there since the second year of the search. The railing paint was different. The water was the same. I held the photocopy of Clara’s photograph and lined up the angle until my hands shook. Ruiz’s partner measured and noted. A second car could have been nothing. A second car could have been everything. Science would not resurrect my children from theory, but theory was no longer only a skid mark.
“I left them,” I said to the water. “I had work.”
May you like
Ruiz did not offer absolution. She offered a next appointment.
On the way back, my doctor’s warning about living alone felt smaller than the warning in Clara’s handwriting. I told my nephew I would still move—eventually. First I would finish reading every page in the bank box. First I would hear whether Gwen’s phone records from that week still existed in any archive. First I would not sell the house out from under a letter that had waited in a mattress for a tired old man to fall.
