Still, I could see how deeply the secret had hurt him.
He’d carried something no child should ever have been asked to carry.
Eventually, I reached across the table and took his hand.
“We’re going to find out what happened,” I told him. “But you can’t hide anything else from me.”
He nodded.
That afternoon, I contacted the county sheriff’s office.
I brought the letters, the photograph, and the original accident report.
The investigator who met with us listened carefully before explaining that the case would need to be reopened.
The documents were troubling, but they weren’t enough by themselves to establish who had been in the vehicle.
Over the following months, investigators reviewed the old identification records and began checking the addresses connected to Silas’s letters.
They also arranged further forensic testing.
The waiting was almost unbearable.
Some nights, I sat awake wondering who had actually been buried in those coffins.
