Chapter 3
My father wanted to burn the paper.
He held it over the kitchen sink while the gas stove clicked beneath the kettle. The folded sheet trembled between his fingers, though he tried to keep his hand still.
“If you burn it,” I said, “we won't know who wrote it.”
“We don't know who wrote it now.”
“There might be a name.”
He looked at me.
I unfolded the paper and placed it flat on the table. The address belonged to a small office near the courthouse, above a tax service and beside a laundromat. Beneath the warning, someone had written three letters in pencil. They had been rubbed over so many times that the paper had thinned.
M. V. C.
My father sat down.
“I've seen those initials,” he said.
“Where?”
“On a form.”
“What form?”
He looked toward the laptop, but didn't open it.
“Your father is not the person they say he is,” he said, then immediately shook his head. “That's not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I mean there are forms I signed without understanding what they would be used for.”
The kettle began to whistle. He turned it off.
On the counter, the courthouse notice lay beside the napkin holding the strip of tape. The two pieces had no obvious connection, but the blue mark on the tape looked like the edge of a printed seal. I turned the tape over. A faint line of ink showed on the adhesive.
“Dad.”
He leaned close.
There were three small letters there, pressed backward as if they had transferred from another surface.
M. V. C.
He touched the tape with one finger.
“Don't show this to anyone.”
“You said to remember what I saw.”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
“Because now it's evidence.”
The word settled between us.
He opened the laptop and searched through files. Most of them had names I didn't understand. He clicked one, then another. A scanned form appeared. The top had a courthouse seal. Near the bottom, beside a box marked witness assistance, was a printed line.
M. V. C. Outreach.
The document listed my name.
My father stared at the screen.
“I never signed this,” he said.
“Your name is there.”
“It isn't my signature.”
The signature line held a dark, uneven mark. It looked like someone had copied the shape of his name without knowing how he wrote it.
“What is outreach?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
“You said you signed forms.”
“Not this one.”
He closed the laptop.
The phone on the counter buzzed. This time he answered.
“Hello?”
He listened.
“No. He won't appear in another video.”
A longer pause.
“He is a child.”
His face hardened.
“I don't care how many people watched the first one.”
The caller said something I couldn't hear. My father looked at me, then at the notice.
“You can speak to my lawyer,” he said. “Not to him.”
He ended the call.
“Who was it?”
“Someone from the courthouse.”
“Did they say my name?”
“They said you were helpful.”
“I wasn't helpful.”
“I know.”
He placed the phone facedown, but it buzzed again almost immediately. He didn't answer.
I picked up the hearing notice. The second page was missing, but the first page had a file number in the corner. I copied it onto the back of the handwritten warning.
My father watched me.
“What are you doing?”
“Keeping it.”
“You shouldn't have to do this.”
“But I have to.”
He opened his mouth, then stopped. His shoulders lowered.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we do it carefully.”
That was the first time he let me make a decision instead of trying to make the fear disappear.
The address on the paper remained unanswered. We couldn't go there that night. My father said it might be watched, and I believed him because he had begun checking the window again.
Before bed, I placed the notice, the tape, and the handwritten warning inside a school folder. I wrote the date on the cover. My handwriting leaned hard to the right.
At the bottom of the warning, beneath the erased initials, I noticed a second line I hadn't seen before. It had been pressed into the paper without ink.
I shaded over it with a pencil.
A name appeared sideways.
Mara Vale.
I read it aloud.
My father came to the doorway. For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he looked toward the locked front door.
“I know that name,” he said.
“Who is she?”
He took the folder from my hands, but he didn't open it.
“She worked near the records office.”
“Did she write the warning?”
“I don't know.”
“Does she know why you need saving?”
My father looked at me, and this time he didn't tell me I was too young to ask.
“She may know why they needed you to say it.”
The lights outside swept across our ceiling as a car passed on the street. We both watched the pale motion fade.
My father turned off the kitchen light.
In the dark, he said, “Tomorrow, you stay beside me. You don't speak to anyone alone.”
I held the folder against my chest.
“What if they ask me to?”
“Then you say no.”
“What if they say it will save you?”
He was quiet for so long that I could hear the refrigerator motor stop.
“Then you still say no.”
I believed him.
But before sunrise, someone slid another envelope beneath our door.
May you like
This one had no address.
Only my name.
