“What did she name him?” I whispered.

“Clara named him Brandon,” Raymond said.

I squeezed my left wrist hard and felt my skin go cold under my fingers.

“Brandon,” I repeated.

“Brandon Vance,” Raymond said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper.

“He’d be twenty-nine years old this fall.”

I picked Theodore up and held him close against my apron, his head on my shoulder, so Raymond wouldn’t see my chin trembling.

At a quarter past one in the afternoon, a motorcycle courier pulled up the long gravel driveway outside the front porch.