The (unmarked, plain) envelope containing the obituary, like the small-denomination bills I accumulate over twelve months, to send to Ethel Johnson, is kept in a secret place in anyplace I live for I do not want anyone to discover it.

Like all my secrets, it is not likely to be revealed.

The valentines I’ve sent to the Johnsons are homemade: construction paper, satiny crimson cutout hearts. Silver Magic Marker pen hand-printing HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! Your Friend. You might think that a young person, possibly even a child, has made the (oversized) valentine which is so obviously the work of an amateur. You might think But why? Who is this? And why money?

Mystified by the postmark which is not South Niagara.

Probably the Johnsons assume (if they assume anything at all) that the valentine has been sent by someone they know. Someone who’d lived in the neighborhood but has since moved away.

A girl who’d gone to school with Hadrian. Might’ve been in love with Hadrian but kept it to herself.

Black girl, surely. Not white.

The first time I sent a valentine to the Johnsons I tried to compose a note of explanation. I did not want to seem rude or mysterious sending strangers a valentine signed just Your Friend.

I knew Hadrian in school. I think of him and still miss him. I am so very sorry what happened to him and I hope . . .

Threw this away. Tried again.

I was not in Hadrian’s class at school but I saw him play basketball and . . .

No. I had not gone to school with Hadrian Johnson, I had never seen him play basketball. I had never knowingly seen him at all.

I did not know Hadrian but everyone who knew him admired him so much. I have prayed for your family. I hope that you and your family believed that there has been some “justice” . . .

No. No prayer. No justice.

Giving up, then. For there are no words.

And what consolation could it be to the Johnsons, that some sort of “justice” had been done. Four (white) boys convicted of manslaughter, sent to prison. If Jerome Jr. and Lionel had been sentenced to life in prison, or executed, that would not have brought back Hadrian Johnson . . .

Guessing that the Johnsons took no pleasure in knowing that their son’s murderers were sent to prison. No pleasure in learning that the elder Kerrigan boy, the one who’d (allegedly) wielded the baseball bat, was killed in prison; or that the parents of the murderers are deeply unhappy, their lives irrevocably altered.

The Johnsons are Christians, I’m sure. Unless Hadrian’s death undermined their faith in God.