CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE HEARING ROOM
The first public hearing concerned the private mailbox service, not Evelyn.
A municipal committee wanted to know why a business had accepted a neighborhood office name without checking whether the office existed.
Trevor attended with Mara and Paul.
Talia sat in the front row beside her father.
Gordon Pike did not appear.
His attorney submitted a short statement denying wrongdoing.
A committee member asked the mailbox service manager whether the account had received hundreds of redirected letters.
The manager confirmed that it had.
“Did that volume strike you as unusual?” the committee member asked.
“We serve businesses with substantial mail,
” the manager said.
“But this wasn’t a business,” Talia whispered.
Her father reached for her hand.
The committee could not determine criminal guilt.
It could, however, require the service to explain its verification procedures and cooperate with inspectors.
After the hearing, a reporter approached Trevor.
“Do you think Evelyn Oakley acted alone?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you think she’s a bad person?”
“I think she opened my mail and tried to justify it,” Trevor answered.
“And I think other people were hurt in ways that deserve more attention than my opinion of her.”
The reporter looked disappointed.
Talia smiled for the first time that day.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE LAST VISIT
Evelyn came to Trevor’s door on a Thursday evening.
She wore the lavender cardigan he remembered from the afternoon at the mailbox.
Her hands were empty.
Trevor opened the door but left the screen latched.
“I need to speak to you,” she said.
“About what?”
“About the people who are saying I sold their information.”
“Did you?”
Evelyn looked toward the street.
“I gave Gordon lists because he said they would help landlords identify problems before they became emergencies.”
“You gave him people’s private letters.”
“I didn’t know what he was doing with every envelope.
”
“Did you know the forwarding requests weren’t authorized?”
She did not answer.
Trevor waited.
“I told myself people would thank me when they understood,” Evelyn said at last.
“What did you expect them to thank you for?”
“Keeping trouble away.”
“You decided that people asking questions were trouble.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled, but her voice remained hard.
“You have no idea what this neighborhood was like before I took care of it.”
“Then tell the inspectors what you did,” Trevor said.
“Tell them what you believed, and tell them who paid for the lists.”
“You think they’ll listen?”
“I think the people whose mail disappeared deserve the truth.
”
Evelyn looked down at the screen door.
“I came to ask you to say I never opened your envelope.”
Trevor felt the air leave his chest.
“I won’t do that.”
She nodded once, as though she had expected the answer.
Then she walked home.
