"Read it," Helen said. Her voice had gone dry. "If we take it home we'll tear it up or frame it, and I don't want to find out which."
Penrose glanced at the others. Lydia nodded. Mark walked back from the window and did not sit, but he put both hands on the back of his chair, which was a kind of staying. Penrose opened the envelope with his thumb. The stationery was cream. Evelyn's handwriting was upright and slightly impatient, the same hand that had labeled jars.
He read.
My dear three. If Arthur is reading this, then I have managed to die in the ordinary way and you are in his office being angry, which I hope you will do honestly and not only in your best clothes. I changed the house. I did not change it because Ruth asked me to. She did not ask. She told me it would make her your proof, and she was right, and I did it anyway. I changed it because I found out you had already divided me while I was still using the steps. I saw the paper in Helen's purse, the one with the advertisement on the back. I saw a letter Mark did not mean to print. I am not going to quote your own words back to you as a punishment. I am going to tell you that I understood them. You wanted no favorites. You wanted a sale. You wanted the house to become a number you could survive. I understand survival. I married a man who bought a house with a loan he hid in a sock drawer, and I survived that too, and we made a life that was better than the hiding.