And every year on the fifth of April, a package arrives at the Nashville gates. It has arrived seven times. It is always addressed to Phoebe in his handwriting, always postmarked from Chattanooga three or four days before, and it has never once contained a letter to me.

I have opened all seven. Phoebe has opened none.

The first three were toys, wrong for her age both directions. The fourth was a book about horses. The fifth, sixth, and seventh were books about horses, in a series, in order, which means at some point somebody told him she liked horses, and I have thought about who that could have been and I have not identified them.

He is not redeemed. I want to be extremely clear, because Grant has heard me say the next part and does not accept it, and he may be right.

Russell Vaughn slapped me beside a birthday cake in front of forty people. He ordered his own five-year-old back into a basement. He looked at the blood on her forehead and then at a scratch on his own arm and chose the scratch.

None of that is undone by a parts warehouse and a series of books about horses.