“Is that a note?” Russell asked, tapping his knuckles against a cardboard box.
I unfolded the first page, the paper dry and stiff. My name was written at the top in her neat hand, the ink slightly faded but still legible.
“I’m sorry, Linda, but I should have told you what Wayne did,” I read aloud.
Russell stopped tapping. “What did Wayne do?”
“She says there was sixty-three thousand dollars,” I said, my voice dropping into its flat drawl.
The kitchen seemed smaller with the paper open between us, the smell of old wood and cardboard filling the corners.
“The settlement from the grocery store truck,” I said.
My thigh began to ache, the old break throbbing under my palm where the metal pin used to be.
“Wayne told me the insurance company only paid for the hospital bills,” I said. “He told me there was nothing left for college. He said we were lucky they paid the doctors.”
“Wayne’s been gone five years, Linda,” Russell said. “And the accident was thirty years ago. What does it matter now?”
