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“It’s not really what I—”
“I can afford it,” she said quickly. “Whatever your fees are, I can pay them.”
Still, he did not look down at the letter. “Theo, the police are—”
“Please, Mac. Dan was…he was my…my friend…” She brushed angrily at the tears that broke through her resolve against them. “He has no one else…no family. I need to do something.” The tears were unstoppable now.
Mac hesitated. He placed his hand tentatively on her shoulder clearly unsure of his place. Theo only sobbed harder. In the end he put his arms around her and let her cry. Eventually, she stopped.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, embarrassed. She pulled away from the sodden patch on his shirt, mortified. She had never thought of herself as weepy, and yet now she seemed so easily reduced to tears…and she felt reduced, though Mac was unwaveringly kind and courteous. “I’m not sure why I’m so—would you read the letter, please?” She stood up. “I’ll go find you one of Gus’s shirts…”
Mac let her go.
Theo gave him a couple of minutes to read, glad too for a moment to gather herself, and returned with a business shirt and a T-shirt. Gus had placed the page down on the coffee table. Theo didn’t know why she was certain that he had not read the first part of the letter in her absence, but she was. “I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer,” she said, holding up the garments.
He smiled. “Since I’ve lost my tie anyway, I’ll take the T-shirt.”
Mac changed while she returned the rejected shirt to Gus’s closet.
“What’s a Hilltop Hood?” he asked as he pulled the T-shirt over his head. “Is it an Australian term?”
“It’s an Australian band.” Theo responded from the other room. “Though I think Gus was over here when he first became a fan. I sent him that T-shirt.”
Theo returned to the living room and sat down again. “Did you…?” she asked looking at the letter.
“Yes.” He watched her nervously fold his soiled shirt.
“Did it tell you anything?”
Mac shrugged. “The writer has excellent penmanship, but the cursive is old-fashioned. I’d guess it belongs to someone over fifty years of age who possibly attended a Catholic elementary school.”
“Dan might have been that old,” Theo said quietly. “I have no idea where he went to school.”
“The agent you met, the day Spiderman drove into you—” Mac asked.
“Veronica Cole.”
“Yes—she’s from this agency, Sandra Djikstra, I presume.”
Theo shook her head. “No. She’s from Day Delos and Associates. They represented Dan.”
“Then how exactly did she get your manuscript?”
Theo frowned. Mac was right. “I suppose he changed his mind and sent it to Day Delos instead.”
“Seems odd, though.”
“To be fair, I had asked him to send it to Day Delos. It’s just that he refused…then.”
“Do you still have the envelope this came in?”
“Yes.” Theo retrieved the torn envelope from the shelf on which she’d left it when she first opened Dan’s letter.
Mac looked at it carefully. “It’s a large envelope for a letter,” he observed.
“Perhaps it’s the only envelope Dan had.”
“These last lines: I am so deeply honored that you have trusted your manuscript to me. I know how hard it is to allow your thoughts, your dreams and secrets, to be viewed by strangers. I want to return that trust. What did he mean by returning your trust?”
