And I sat there with my hands flat on the desk and I thought about a girl at a birthday party in a dress that cost four hundred dollars, laughing.

I did my job. I gave the woman the transportation voucher and the number in Columbia and my direct line.

But I went out to the car afterward and sat there for twenty minutes, and what I found in myself was not what I expected, and I haven’t worked out yet what to do with it.

Because I know exactly where Paige lives.

She sends her address on the back of the envelope every time she sends a card to Margaret, and Margaret sends the cards to me, and I have never once opened them.

They’re in the drawer of the hall table. Four of them.