Then he took from his shirt the envelope addressed to Mrs. W. B. O’Brien in Toledo, Ohio. Though his mother wrote with great speed and you had to study certain words to know what they were, she had a graceful hand and wrote in even, well-spaced lines. At the bottom of the page the writing would get smaller and smaller and creep up the sides, as if she limited herself to a certain number of sheets.

This correspondent, Bernice O’Brien, was his mother’s special confidante. Perhaps because they so seldom met face to face, Annabel felt she could write the truth to Bernice. The woman had been her closest friend in high school, and later married a tire salesman. When Annabel attended a class reunion in Toledo, some years ago, she found that Bernice had become fat and arthritic and was confined to a wheel chair. Her misery was constant, and even though she had taken up metaphysical studies to help her cope with it, the pain was at times so intense she needed drugs to subdue it. Because of this sad condition, Bernice’s only child, a daughter named Echo O’Brien, now almost thirty years old, had never married and still lived at home. Annabel had met this daughter at the time of the class reunion, and always spoke of her as a “beautiful thing, but very silent, the poor creature.”

Because Annabel wrote the truth in these letters, Clinton always counted himself lucky to get hold of one of them, and took great pleasure in copying them into his notebooks. He knew that this theft of her privacy was a kind of crime. But he could commit it without any feeling of guilt. If his fingers shook as he slit the envelope, it was from an excess of eagerness to enjoy the secrets it might contain.

He smoked a cigarette as he read:

1129 SEMINARY ST.
CLEVELAND, O.—WED. EVE.

DEAREST FRIEND, DEAREST BERNICE,

I’m afraid you find me at a low ebb as I have been fighting the blues something awful. Isnt it interesting in the sense of ironical that I have no one to turn to but you for consolation my dearest friend whose burdens are so much heavier than anybody elses? But thats life and it is such a comfort to me. I dont know why you dont write back and say Dear Annabel! I have troubles of my own. Ha. God bless you and I do pray for you every single day. And how is lovely Echo doing?