"Thank you," I said to Fosse.
He looked up. Surprised, I thought, by the word.
"I'm going to ask you to cooperate with the federal investigation," I said. "Not as a condition of anything. Asa, separate statement. The documentation has already been handed over. What you tell them will affect how they build the case, not whether they build it." I paused. "But you knew my mother. You knew what I was doing and why and you know what was done to me. My name deserves to be in the record. The complete record."
He held my gaze for a long time. His eyes were tired in the way of someone who has wanted permission for something for years without knowing it was permission they were waiting for.
"I'll cooperate," he said.
I nodded.
I stood. Dominic stood.
At the door I stopped.
"The report you signed," I said. "My death report. When you signed it, did you believe it was an accident?"
He was quiet.
"No," he said. "I knew it wasn't."
I nodded once.
"That's in the record too," I said. "I just wanted you to know I knew."
I walked out into the Metairie morning.
* * *
Dominic came out behind me. They walked to the car and I stood on the passenger side for a moment, the paper in my pocket, the number on the paper, the city somewhere behind them.
"He's alive," Dominic said.
"He's alive." I said it as fact, not surprise, I had been operating on that hypothesis since Fosse said the number was active three weeks ago, and saying it out loud was just closing the loop. But something in my chest moved when I said it. Something that had been braced against a different outcome for a long time.
I got in the car.
Dominic got in and did not start the engine immediately. He sat there with his hands on the wheel and looked at the street ahead.
"When you're ready," he said.
I understood he meant the call. Not call now and not don't call, just: when I was ready, it would be there.
"Not yet," I said. "I need, " I paused, finding the right architecture for it. "I need to be somewhere quiet. Before I talk to him I need, an hour."
"All right."
He started the engine.
I sat with my hands in my lap and watched the Metairie streets give way to the city, the familiar skyline assembling itself against the morning sky, and thought about my father in a town I had never heard of, keeping a phone charged, calling a number occasionally to confirm that the person who knew where he was was still alive.
He had been waiting.
I had been working.
They had both, in their separate ways, been doing the same thing.
The most capable person he'd ever known.