Chapter 7: The Email Account Was Not the Whole Story
The next morning, Mason came to our house alone.
I saw him through the front window before he knocked. He stood on the porch with both hands in the pockets of his jacket, looking at the door as if it belonged to someone else. The folder was no longer with him. I had not expected him to return after the police took it, and for several seconds I stayed beside the window without moving.
Amy was at the kitchen table with Frederick asleep against her shoulder. His fever had eased enough that he could sleep for longer stretches, but she still checked his forehead every few minutes. The records from the county office lay between us, weighted at one corner by the small box containing the F pendant I had brought home for him.
Mason knocked again.
I opened the door but did not step aside. He looked past me toward the kitchen, then lowered his eyes.
I let him in.
He remained near the entryway, careful not to touch the wall or the table. The house felt different with him inside it. Before the party, I had thought of him as a cousin who appeared at family gatherings and helped carry boxes when someone asked. Now I could picture his hand closing around the deed folder beside our back door.
Amy shifted Frederick higher against her chest. Mason watched the movement, then reached into his pocket and removed a folded sheet of paper.
The page had been printed, not handwritten. His name appeared at the bottom. There were three paragraphs above it, each dated. He placed it on the table and kept his hand over the lower edge.
I read it standing up.
Mason wrote that Teresa had told him to take the folder from the desk and bring it to her car. He wrote that she had called the deed necessary and had said the matter would be handled inside the family. He did not claim to understand the property action. He did not say he had opened the folder or sent anything electronically.
Then I reached the final paragraph.
He had included his email account because the filing had been sent through it. He wrote that the account had been used from Teresa's house during the party. He also wrote that he had not told the police this when they first arrived because he was afraid of being treated as the person responsible.
The sentence sat between us.
I understood the fear. I also understood what it could cost us if the record remained incomplete.
Mason pulled a second page from his pocket. It was a printed copy of an email. The message had been sent from his account shortly before the party began. It contained no explanation, only an attachment name that matched part of the county filing.
He had not opened the attachment, he wrote. Teresa had asked him to leave the laptop available in the room where she kept her party supplies.
Amy looked at the paper, then at Mason. She did not speak. Her face tightened when Frederick stirred, and she turned him away from the table until he settled.
I told Mason, quietly, that the statement needed to go to the police and the records office.
He nodded once.
His condition was written on the back of the page. He wanted his name kept out of any family message or conversation unless the official process required it. He would give the statement, but he would not meet Teresa privately.
I accepted.
When he left, he paused at the porch and looked toward the street. He seemed smaller than he had at the party, stripped of the movement that had carried him toward the back door.
May you like
I returned to the table and read the statement again.
The email account explained the submission. Mason's account did not explain who had used it, or why the filing had been built from information inside our folder. That part still waited in the silence between the lines.
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