Two days later, the police called me again. Someone named Thomas had found something of mine and wanted me to call him. Dumbfounded, I made the call. “It’s blue,” Thomas said. “And I don’t know for sure, but it might be.”
My husband insisted on going himself this time to retrieve the item. Twenty minutes later he returned, my flash drive in hand. He said Thomas had told him he’d looked every day on his walk until he’d finally spotted it, beneath a thin pane of ice in the ditch. He’d stomped on the ice until it broke, and then fished it out. There was no way the material on it was still retrievable. Except that when I plugged it into my computer, it was. The whole book was still there, as intact as it had been before.
I still don’t know Thomas’s last name. And I doubt that we will cross paths again in the foreseeable future. But Thomas is in this book. He became the inspiration for Jimmy, who, like Thomas, takes long walks and speaks only when spoken to.
I think the story is better for having him in it.
I know I am.