It was from Pasadena that I mailed my aunt the sheet of paper that Mrs. Takahashi had given me the autumn before. I had held on to it out of cowardice, for I did not want to see her and so would not drive to her home to deliver the document in person and hesitated in mailing it when I was yet in Placer County for fear she would come visit me to discuss its particulars. I am quite sure she wondered why I had mailed it to her from Southern California, for it might have implied that Mrs. Takahashi and I were still in touch, which we were not, our lives untethered from each other’s in the same way my life had become untethered from Mrs. Wilson’s. We had told a story together, in a way, and that story was over now and there was nothing left between us but guilt and disappointment and sadness. We did not find out what had really happened to Ray Takahashi and at that point I assumed that we never would. But in truth, it was only Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Takahashi who would never find out that last piece of information; it would, in the end, be mine to bear alone.