He went into the living room and knelt beside the chest that contained his old keepsakes. The old pictures of his family back in Miami. His medical diagnoses, kept like grade school report cards. The Billboard Top 40 sheet he had shown me. He pulled out a thick folder and leafed through dog-eared sheets of music and lyrics until he came upon a manila envelope. He took it out and handed it to me, barely looking me in the eye. “I got this about a week ago,” he said, shrugging. “A couple of days after Evan died . . . I can’t remember exactly when. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I hid it. I didn’t even tell Gabby. I was scared. I knew they had found me. I didn’t want to believe they had anything to do with my son.” The envelope was addressed to Charlie. No return address. “You have to believe me, Jay, if I knew this could have ever hurt anyone . . . Evan, Gabby . . .”
