Ezra lay awake a long time that night, listening to the house tick and settle, listening to his father’s labored breathing through the thin wall.
When he was certain everyone slept, he rose and went barefoot into the hall and opened the cabinet and lifted out the box.
He untied the blue ribbon with hands that already knew, somehow, that they didn’t want to.
Inside were dozens of typed letters, and every one of them bore his name.
At the bottom of each was a signature — his signature, or a careful, patient forgery of it, close enough that his own eye snagged on the difference only because he knew the truth.
He read one, then another, then a third, and they all said the same thing in slightly different words: that Ezra was ruined, that his business had collapsed, that he was drowning in debt and shame and couldn’t bear to be seen, that he could not afford to visit and — this was the cruelest engineering of all — that they must not call his number, must not reach out, must give him room to fail in private.