"I can't listen to the radio in the car. Since I was a kid. I've never known why."
He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"No— I'm not saying—" I didn't know what I was saying. I wiped my face, which was wet with rain and with other things. "I'm saying I didn't know. I've had pieces my whole life and I didn't know what they went to."
We sat.
"Why the notes?" I said finally. "Eamon said you sent notes with the money orders. The weather. And the sober thing. Still sober, so many years."
He was quiet a moment. "Your mother wrote to me once," he said. "In twenty twelve. I'd been sending the money orders about three years then, with letters. Long letters. Apologies. Pages of them. How sorry I was. How I thought about it every day. And she wrote back, one page, and said stop." The corner of his mouth moved. "She said, 'Stop sending me money and stop telling me you're sorry. I know you're sorry. Your sorry doesn't do anything for me. It's a thing you're carrying, and you are trying to hand it to me, and I have enough to carry.'"
That sounded so much like my mother that I made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"And she said," he went on, "'If you have to write to me, write me something true that isn't about that day. And tell me if you are still sober. Because if you go back to drinking, then he died for nothing, and I will not have that.'" He turned the cane a little in his hands. "So I did what she said. Except for the money. I couldn't stop the money. I tried for one month and I couldn't sleep. I figured she could throw them away. I figured that was her right."
"She didn't throw them away."
He turned and looked at me.
"She kept them," I said. "All of them. In a boot box in her closet. Eamon found them after she died. She never cashed one. But she kept every single one. And the notes. In order."