The mailman’s face falls as he picks up the truth in my tone. “That Parchman’s a wicked place, Penn. My cousin’s boy had to do a stretch in there on a dope charge. His parents couldn’t hardly stand to visit him.”

“All penitentiaries are grim, Theo.”

“I guess. Well, you keep at it. I know things’ll turn out right in the end. Everything happens for a reason.”

For half a second I want to smack Theo Driscoll in the face. His throwaway assertion carries such a muddle of childish faith, fatalism, and predestination that it would take me an hour to properly respond.

“That is technically true,” I say in a restrained voice, but in my mind I hear Inigo Montoya saying, I do not think that means what you think it means.

Looking confused and a little put out, Theo hands me the mail.

“Thanks,” I tell him. “I’ll see you soon.”

“If you fill out that change-of-address form, you will. Otherwise I’m sending everything back to Washington Street.”

As he descends the opposite staircase and heads toward the Parsonage, I flip through the mail. A couple of bills go through my fingers; then I see the letter Theo mentioned. The one from Europe. April is a royalty month, and the envelope is made of the ultrathin paper I associate with foreign communications. Whatever’s inside feels heavy, though, and padded. The postmark looks unfamiliar, which is surprising after years of receiving letters from readers around the world. The postmark is smeared, too, so I can’t even read the name of the country. The stamps show a coat of arms in yellow and orange, but the words beneath are printed in French. There’s no return address, either. Just my name and our old Washington Street address, above u.s.a. printed in block letters, as though by a child.

Opening my eyes wide, I hold the letter farther from my face and look down my nose at the smeared postmark. Finally the name of the country of origin comes clear: Andorre.

“Andorra,” I whisper, a chill racing along my arms. “Billy Knox?”

After a moment of paranoia, when I visualize opening the letter in a little cloud of toxic powder, I rip the end off the envelope and pull out the paper inside.

The thrice-folded sheet appears to be blank. As I start to unfold it, what I felt through the envelope falls out into my palm. It’s a coin. Dull silver, about the size of an American half-dollar, with a leather cord tied through a hole near the edge of it. It is a half-dollar, I realize.