It was Irene’s.

Chapter 12 — The Letter in the Cafeteria

Mark had gone completely pale, the color draining from his face from the top down, as Martha unfolded the paper.

The letter was dated five weeks earlier — the day of the first appointment.

Irene would explain later, in a small voice, that she had written it in the hospital cafeteria while she waited, sitting alone at a plastic table with a vending-machine drink she wasn’t drinking, in the ten or fifteen minutes while her father went to pay for parking.

She had written it quickly, in one pass, the way you write a thing you are afraid you will lose the courage to write.