Page 51 of Hate Mail

“Penny Hayes,” Maxwell says. “Though I guess she’s Penelope Pichler by now. That chick always wanted that double-P name. Wanted to be Penny Pickles.”

I’m suddenly aware of my own heartbeat. It feels heavy. I’m afraid that at any moment, this guy will decide he’s said enough and won’t give us any more information, but right now he seems like an open book. I decide to push my luck.

“You kept in touch with them?”

“Oh, yeah. Got an invite to their wedding, but I couldn’t go. I’m friends with him on Facebook. You try to find him on there?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t find him. Do you mind showing me?”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps the screen a few times. He frowns. “Oh,” he says. “Looks like I don’t have him on here anymore.”

“He must have deactivated his account.” Because he doesn’t want me to find him just yet, but I don’t say that. “When did he get married? Last time I talked to him, he told me that he got engaged.”

He blows a puff of air through his lips. “Gee, probably ’bout a year ago. I would’ve been there if I hadn’t been deployed at the time.”

“You knew Penny too, then? Did she live here with him?”

He frowns. “Nah. We served with Hayes. They were one of those on-again-off-again things. I didn’t even know they were back together until I got the wedding invitation.”

“So, they live in Texas now. Any chance you know where?”

He shrugs. “Dallas, I think.”

I look at Anne. She has her lips clamped together, but I can tell that she’s trying to hide her smile. This is more than what we could have hoped to find out from this trip.

“Thank you,” I say, turning back to Maxwell. “This is really helpful.”

“No problem,” he says. “You can just turn around up there and head on out.”

We get back in the car. Anne drives us down the street and stops the car in a strip mall parking lot. “Did Luca ever write to you from Texas?” she asks.

“No,” I say, trying to remember what I read in the letters last night. “He went to Dallas once, but he never had an address there. He must have moved there after my last letter to him.”

“This is big,” she says. “Did you know his wife’s name before? Look her up in that database.”

I open my phone and log in to PeopleFinder, where I searched for Luca before. I type in ‘Penelope Pichler’ and wait for the results to load. Nothing looks promising. Maybe she didn’t change her name. Or maybe they never got married. I’m not sure why I’m hoping for the latter. I type in ‘Penelope Hayes’ and this time, the website loads an address in Dallas, Texas.

“Found her,” I say. My heart is pounding. I can hear it thrumming in my ears. I can’t believe I might have just found Luca.

“That’s his address,” Anne says, looking over my shoulder. “It’s got to be. Holy shit, Gnome, we did it.”

“What now?”

“What do you mean? Now you can write back and surprise the hell out of him.”

“But what if he doesn’t live there anymore?” I think of the letters that I sent two years ago that were returned. I don’t know if I can handle that happening again.

“You heard that marine guy. He lives with her in Texas.”

“We can’t know for sure. His name isn’t listed on here.”

“They’re married. Of course he lives with her.”

I find it hard to believe that they’re still married, especially since her last name is Hayes, when according to Maxwell, she really wanted to take Luca’s last name. I also just don’t want Luca to be married. I can’t explain why I feel that way.

“Maybe we should check first,” I say.

“Check? How?”

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