Not a year of trying, not her leaving, not the debt, the car, or the empty apartment. A stranger in a diner in Barstow who chose to spend his authority instead of his violence. And in doing so, gave two desperate men something they hadn't been offered in a very long time. A different way out.
"You know what I think?" she said. Leo looked at her. "I think you should write him a letter," she said. "Mike Callahan, I think you should find a way and write him a letter." "Not to thank him, just" she paused.
"Just so he knows it landed." Leo considered this. Rosie made a sound, the imperious, self-expressive sound she'd inherited from her mother, and grabbed two of his fingers simultaneously. "Yeah," he said. "I think you're right." He wrote it the following Sunday.
He wrote it by hand on paper, which he hadn't done since grade school, because it felt like the appropriate medium. The slowest, most deliberate form of communication. The one that required the most commitment and left the most of yourself on the page. He wrote three drafts before he had one he could send.
He mailed it to the San Bernardino charter address that Garrett's card had on it, knowing it might not reach Mike directly, knowing it might reach Bobby or Declan or Garrett first, knowing it might not reach anyone. He sent it anyway because Deja was right, the landing needed to be acknowledged. The letter was four paragraphs. The last paragraph said, "You told me the tape told the story of two men who made a wrong choice and then made a right one.
I've been thinking about that. I think the tape actually tells the story of a man who had already decided what kind of person he was going to be and how that decision changed every decision in the room. I don't know if I can be that kind of man, but I know now that it's a thing a person can be. That's the part I didn't have before.
Three weeks later, a letter came back to the Stockton address. A plain envelope, no return name San Bernardino postmark. Inside was a single index card with four words written on it in a handwriting that was large, deliberate, and unadorned. Now you have it.