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Nolan nodded at the bag. “The letters.”

Frowning now, Friedle opened it. “No way. So this is where they ended up.” He lifted the stack of letters out. “I didn’t think I’d ever see these again. I thought I left this bag on the bus or maybe on campus somewhere. How’d you know it was mine? Did I leave my student ID in here?”

“Some extrapolation,” Nolan said.

“And a lot of sleuthing,” Eli added. “I even spoke with Professor Waugh.”

Friedle blinked. “Wow. There’s a name I never thought I’d hear again. These letters were for his class, you know.”

“Yeah, he said.”

“Did he tell you who I was?” Friedle asked. “How? He wouldn’t have known me as Freddie. No one does.”

“How did you know Friedle is Freddie?” Eli asked Nolan. “Did you figure it was a play on his last name?”

“No,” Nolan said. “The letters. You mention meeting people where they’re at and needing to take time with your thoughts. You said something similar to me shortly after I started working here. I didn’t remember that until recently, and then when I did, I couldn’t remember who’d said it . . . anyway. It clicked earlier today.”

Friedle raised a single eyebrow this time, and it was very unimpressed. “You read my letters?”

“Nooooooooo,” Eli said.

Nolan held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just a little. So we could try to figure out who Freddie was and get the letters back to you. They seemed important.”

“Can’t fault Waugh for this assignment,” Friedle said. “He said we’d learn a lot about ourselves if we took it seriously, and I know I certainly did.”

“Did you ever regret it?” Nolan asked quietly. “Taking that first step with your teammates?”

Friedle smiled as though he knew why Nolan was asking. “I may have only played a couple of seasons with the Trailblazers—an injury forced early retirement—but I met some of my best friends while I was on this team. Now I work for the best team in the league. So what do you think?”

“Did you ever intend to give the letters to Annie?” Eli asked.

“Back then? Hell no. Now, after twelve years of marriage?” Friedle looked past them, presumably at his wife. “Maybe. And let’s get one thing clear: to you, she’s Antonia or Toni. Annie belongs to me.”

Eli saluted him. “Yes, Coach.”

“Thank you for getting these back to me. But also . . .” He first whacked Eli on the head with the stack of letters, then Nolan. “That’s for invading my privacy.” He walked around them toward his table.

With the letters.

For a crazy moment, Nolan wanted to snatch them back. He’d been living with them—and with Freddie—for weeks, and letting them go was like reluctantly returning his favorite Encyclopedia Brown book to the library or saying goodbye to his best friend on the last day of camp.

“Wait,” Eli called. “Where does the nickname Freddie come from?”

Friedle looked at him like the answer was obvious. “My first name. Alfred.”

“Alfred,” Eli repeated slowly, turning to Nolan. “Alfred. How did I not know that?”

“In your defense, he’s listed as Al literally everywhere. I just assumed Albert or Alan.”

“Still,” Eli grumbled. “Man, do you remember when I joked that Friedle was Freddie? I was more right than I knew.” He took Nolan’s hand. “How do you feel? Now that the mystery is solved and the letters are back where they belong?”

Nolan sat with the question for a minute because he didn’t feel the relief he’d expected to. There was a little bit, of course—relief that Freddie was, indeed, a real person. That he wasn’t someone who’d never found his place.

He was Assistant Coach Al Friedle. Still with the organization, still part of the Trailblazers family. Still with Antonia. It had been impossible to tell from the letters, but Friedle’s story did end happily, and there was relief and comfort in knowing that.

But the sense of loss was so acute that Nolan’s eyes stung. The letters had been like a silent companion, one that he’d carried around mentally if not always physically, thinking about them while he should be working or in hotel rooms during away games or while driving to the arena and even when he’d been out with King. He’d seen himself reflected so strongly in them—in Freddie—that he could have written them. Reading them had sometimes felt like looking at a reflection of himself, and giving them back meant letting go of the version of Freddie that had only existed in Nolan’s imagination.

Yet it wasn’t only Freddie he was letting go of. It was also the version of himself that had projected itself onto Freddie.