Chapter 3: What the Letter Said
The envelope was light.
Almost nothing inside.
Eleanor held it out and I took it.
The paper had yellowed slightly at the edges.
My name — *Cecily Ashby* — was written in a careful, formal hand I didn't recognize.
The return address in the upper left corner was a medical office in Billings, Montana.
"What is this?" I said.
"Open it," Eleanor said.
Her voice had dropped to something close to a whisper.
Conrad stepped forward.
"Mom.
What did you do?"
She didn't look at him.
I slid my finger under the seal.
The glue had dried brittle with age and gave way easily.
Inside was a single folded sheet — a letter on clinic letterhead, dated December 19th, eight years ago.
Six days after Conrad had walked out.
I read the first line.
Then I read it again.
*Dear Mr.
Ashby, this letter is to confirm the results of the paternity consultation requested on behalf of your wife, Cecily Ashby.
The enclosed documentation confirms that the pregnancy is consistent with the timeline of your marriage.
We strongly encourage both parties to—*
I stopped reading.
My throat had closed.
"Someone requested a paternity consultation," I said.
"On my behalf.
Without telling me."
Conrad's fiancée — I still didn't know her name — made a small sound from the hallway.
She had pressed herself against the wall, arms crossed, watching Conrad the way you watch someone you're not sure you recognize anymore.
"Conrad." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Did you ask someone to do this?"
"I didn't know about any letter," he said.
"I swear to you, I never saw that."
"He didn't," Eleanor said.
We both turned to her.
She was still standing in the middle of the room, hands folded in front of her, chin slightly raised.
The posture of someone who had been rehearsing this moment for a long time and had decided, finally, to stop rehearsing.
"I intercepted it," she said.
"It arrived while Conrad was already gone.
I opened it.
I read it.
And I made a decision."
"You made a decision," I repeated.
"You have to understand what things were like then.
Conrad had just left.
He was a mess.
He wasn't sleeping.
He wasn't eating.
I thought—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I thought if he saw that letter, if he knew the pregnancy was real, he would go back out of obligation.
Not love.
Obligation.
And I didn't want that for him."
"And you didn't want that for me either," I said.
"Is that what you're about to say?"
She didn't answer.
"Eleanor." I set the letter down on the side table.
Carefully.
Like it might break.
"I raised four children alone.
For eight years.
I worked nights.
I missed school plays because I was covering a shift.
I told them their father didn't know about them because I didn't want them to feel unwanted.
And all this time, you were sitting on the one piece of paper that could have changed everything."
One of the children — Thomas, the quieter of the two boys — had drifted to the doorway of the sitting room.
He was watching Eleanor with an expression I couldn't read.
Not angry.
Just studying her, the way children study things they don't yet have words for.
Eleanor saw him.
Something moved across her face.
"I'm sorry," she said.
But she was looking at Thomas when she said it, not at me.
Conrad hadn't moved.
He was standing in the center of the hallway with his hands at his sides, and the expression on his face was one I had never seen on him before.
Not anger.
Not denial.
It was the face of a man doing arithmetic he didn't want to finish.
"Four," he said quietly.
"You said four."
"Quadruplets," I said.
"Two boys, two girls.
Born the following June."
He looked at each child in turn.
Slowly.
Like he was trying to find something in their faces that would let him disbelieve what he was seeing.
He didn't find it.
His fiancée pushed off the wall.
"Conrad.
I need to talk to you.
Right now."
He didn't move.
"Conrad."
He finally turned toward her.
But whatever she saw in his face made her stop asking.
The fire in the sitting room crackled.
Outside, snow had begun to fall against the dark Montana sky.
Eleanor picked up the letter from where I had set it and held it out to me again.
"Take it," she said.
"It was always yours."
I looked at her hand.
The envelope.
My name in that careful, formal script.
"Why now?" I said.
"Why tell me tonight, after eight years?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Because I watched you walk through that door," she said, "and I realized I had been waiting for you to."
I took the envelope.
Conrad's fiancée walked past both of us without a word, picked up her coat from the rack by the door, and went outside.
May you like
The door didn't slam.
That was almost worse.
