"Sixty-two," I said. "That's right. The fall. You've been in before?"
"Many times," she said. "A long time ago." She unsnapped the black handbag. She didn't take out the change purse this time. She reached in with both hands and took out a manila envelope, the big kind, nine by twelve, and laid it face down on the table between us, on the spot where her plate had been, and she smoothed it flat with her palm, slow, the way you'd smooth a tablecloth. It was soft and furred at the corners from handling. There was something written on the back in blue ballpoint, in an old-fashioned, careful hand, and I read it upside down without meaning to. It said: For the girl's mother.
She kept her hand on it. She looked at me. Her eyes were wet, but her voice was perfectly steady, the steadiest voice I'd heard all morning, steadier than mine would have been.
"You'll want to see this," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But you'll want to see it."
And she slid it across the table to me, and took her hand away.
I didn't touch it right away. I remember that. I remember looking at it the way you'd look at a dog in the road that might be dead and might not. Behind me the jukebox clicked over and somebody's quarter came up, and it was Juice Newton, "Queen of Hearts," which had been everywhere the summer before, and to this day I can't hear that song without smelling boysenberry and wet canvas.
"What is it?" I said.
"Open it," she said. "Please. Then I'll tell you everything. I'll tell you who I am. But I want you to see it first, before you know who I am, because once you know, you won't trust it. You'll think I'm a foolish old woman. Or something worse."
I undid the clasp. I tipped it up and slid what was inside out onto the Formica.