DEAR TOM, it said. I GOT YOUR ADDRESS FROM DEPUTY RUIZ. I HOPE THAT'S OK. I WANTED TO TELL YOU I'M IN SCHOOL AGAIN. TENTH GRADE IN SALT LAKE. I'M BEHIND IN MATH BUT JESS HELPS ME. THE JUDGE SAID I CAN STAY WITH HER FOR GOOD UNTIL MOM GETS OUT, AND MOM SAID YES. MOM WRITES ME EVERY WEEK NOW. SHE'S IN A PROGRAM. SHE SAYS SHE'S SORRY ABOUT CURTIS. SHE SAYS SHE DIDN'T KNOW. I THINK MAYBE SHE KIND OF KNEW. BUT SHE'S TRYING.
CURTIS AND DARRELL TOOK A PLEA DEAL. DEPUTY RUIZ SAYS THEY'RE GOING TO BE IN PRISON A LONG TIME. THE POLICE IN RENO FOUND THE GERMAN MAN'S MOTORCYCLE IN A GARAGE WITH ELEVEN OTHER STOLEN ONES. THEY SENT IT BACK TO GERMANY ON A BOAT. THE MAN ON THE TRIKE CALLED ME. HIS NAME IS HAROLD. HE SAID THANK YOU. I CRIED.
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TOMORROW. I'M SIXTEEN. JESS IS MAKING ME A CAKE. IT'S GOING TO BE BAD. SHE CAN'T BAKE.
DID YOU CALL YOUR DAUGHTER? YOU PROMISED.
YOUR FRIEND, WREN.
P.S. I LOOKED IT UP. WRENS SING SO LOUD BECAUSE THEY'RE SMALL AND THEY HAVE TO BE HEARD OVER ALL THE BIGGER BIRDS. I THOUGHT YOU'D WANT TO KNOW.
Tom read it on the back porch of a small yellow house in Sacramento, on a cool gray November morning, sitting in a folding chair with a three-year-old boy asleep across his lap. He had rented an apartment twenty minutes away in October. He had found work at a motorcycle shop on the east side of town, three days a week, fixing other people's bikes. On the other days, he picked Carter up from preschool.
The back door opened, and Molly came out with two mugs of coffee and handed him one.
He took it. He looked down at it for a second, steaming, black as tar.
"What?" Molly said. "Did I make it wrong?"
"No," said Tom, and laughed, and could not quite explain why. "No. It's perfect."
He drank it. Then he folded the letter carefully and put it in his wallet, behind his driver's license, next to the photograph of a grinning little boy in a pile of wrapping paper, and that afternoon, with Carter's help, he wrote back. He told Wren he had called. He told her about the bounce house, and the birthday party, and the job, and the yellow house. He told her that Carter had learned to say Grandpa and said it at the top of his lungs at every opportunity, in grocery stores and libraries and once in the middle of a very quiet church, loud as a bird.
Then he signed it, and underneath his name, because he thought she would understand, he drew a small brown bird with its beak open wide, singing.
THE END