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disappears, running down the hall.
    â€œThe police won’t come.” I stick the Glock back in my jeans and pick up the basket, a thousand years older than I was when I walked in the door. “Read the card. It explains everything.”
    â€œRead a card? The police won’t come? What the hell is happening?”
    He takes the card from Eloise’s limp hand as the girl shouts from far away, “The police aren’t answering. It was just a message, like for a bank. For Valor Savings. But I called 911, like, three times. What do I do, Matt? Tell me what to do!”
    He doesn’t answer. He’s reading the card. Tears are slippingdown his cheeks, he has one arm around his dead mother, and still he’s reading the card.
    â€œWhat does this mean?” He looks up into my eyes like I’m a priest, like I’m God, like I know anything. Like I have power.
    â€œIt means you need to start paying off your debts.”
    I can’t stay here a second more, watching a son mourn his dead mother. I can’t watch her head flop against his shoulder as he tries to keep her upright.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I mutter, and I hurry down the hall, the basket in my hands.
    The girl in the tracksuit is nowhere to be seen. The front door is still open. I jog back to the mail truck and pull the Postal Service shirt off over my head and throw it onto the floorboards so it doesn’t record my sobbing. My hands are shaking as I put the truck into drive, and I swerve around a cat and nearly hit a mailbox. I can barely drive through the tears, and my mind won’t let go of her beautiful hands holding the card as everything else fell away to nothing.
    I know she said she didn’t mind. That she forgave me. Hell, it was probably a mercy for her. If she was in hospice care, trapped in a bed, strapped to those machines, it’s not like she was living a great life. He said she couldn’t eat. Eloise Framingham wasn’t just going to miraculously recover. That woman was already dead. It was just a matter of time before her brain realized it. Maybe I did her a ­kindness, doing it quick like that.
    But what about her son? Now he’s got a dead mom, and he’ll probably go into debt just to hold her funeral, and that little paper card isn’t going to be much comfort to him. He’s probably already ripped it to shreds. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said better him than me. But now, seeing the reality of another kid watching his mom die of cancer and then the senseless, cold-blooded government murder in the back bedroom, I’m not so sure. Maybe they weren’t ready to let go yet, either of them.
    Less than five minutes ago, I stood on her doorstep, wishing she would be ancient. But seeing Eloise Framingham die there, in her bed, with as much dignity as she could muster—now I wish she had been mean or a drug dealer or something, anything that I could hate. I wish she had been like that nasty creeper in the big coat who comes into my work on Kids Eat Free night and rubs himself under the table and tries to corner little boys in the bathroom. I wish it had been someone who deserved to die, instead of someone who simply couldn’t afford proper medical care or who never had a chance to beat her disease. When she racked up her debt, Eloise Framingham didn’t want a bigger TV or a fancier purse. She just wanted a few more years of life. I’ll never even know if she got what she wanted. If it was worth it.
    I back away from the mailbox I almost hit and turn around, and my mail truck is stuck right in front of Eloise Framingham’s garden gnomes while I frantically try to escape. The guy in the sweatshirtsteps onto the porch with a rifle in his hands. He opens his mouth to shout something, but I slam my foot on the gas before I find out what it is. He must fumble the gun, or maybe it’s not loaded, or maybe he’s too sad to pull the trigger,