Chapter 5: The Letter He Asked Her to Burn
I didn't touch the envelope right away.
It sat on the entryway table between us, and I looked at it the way you look at something that might change the shape of everything you thought you understood.
"Why didn't you destroy it?" I asked.
"Because he asked me to," Dana said.
"And every time Elliot asked me to do something I thought was wrong, he turned out to be right and I turned out to have been protecting myself." She looked at the envelope.
"I decided this time I'd let someone else make the call."
"That's a convenient way to handle it."
"Yes," she said simply.
"It is."
I picked up the envelope.
This one had no wax seal.
Just my name, written in the same tight handwriting, but faster — the letters leaning slightly, the way his writing looked when he was tired.
"Did you read it?" I asked.
"No."
I believed her.
I wasn't sure why, but I did.
I opened it standing there in the entryway.
Dana took a step back, toward the door, giving me space without leaving.
The letter was one page.
Dated eight months ago — four months after he'd ended things with me.
Four months into the year I'd spent trying to forget him.
*"Melanie.
I'm writing this because I made a decision and I need to say it out loud to someone, even if that someone is a piece of paper you'll never read.*
*"I called you four times last month.
I hung up each time before it rang.
I told myself it was because I didn't want to confuse you.
The truth is I was afraid you'd already moved on, and I didn't want to know.*
*"I'm not doing well.
The doctors adjusted my medication twice in the last six weeks.
I sleep most of the afternoon now.
Dana brings food on Tuesdays.
Phillip calls but doesn't know what to say, so we talk about football.*
*"I keep thinking about the night I came to your door.
The way you looked at me.
You knew something was wrong.
You always knew.
You just trusted me enough to believe me when I said I was tired.*
*"I was not tired.
I was terrified.*
*"I want to tell you that.
I want to call you and say: I was not tired.
I was terrified, and I loved you, and I thought leaving was the kindest thing I could do, and I'm no longer certain I was right.*
*"But I won't call.
Because if I call, you'll come.
And if you come, I won't be able to ask you to leave again.
And you will spend the next year — however many months that turns out to be — watching me get smaller.
I can't do that to you.
I already decided I can't.*
*"So instead I'm writing this down and giving it to Dana and asking her to burn it.*
*"I hope she does.*
*"I hope you never read this.*
*"I hope you're somewhere right now that feels like a good life.
I hope someone is carrying an umbrella for you."*
No initials this time.
Just a blank space where a signature would have been, as if he'd stopped himself at the last moment.
I folded the letter.
My hands were steady.
I didn't know how.
Dana hadn't moved from near the door.
"He called me," I said.
"Four times.
I never knew."
"I didn't know that either," she said quietly.
"He thought I'd moved on."
"Had you?"
I thought about the year.
The weeks of crying.
The slow, deliberate work of putting him into the past tense.
The morning I'd finally stopped checking his social media.
The day I'd given away the umbrella he'd left at my apartment.
"I was trying to," I said.
Dana nodded.
She looked like she was choosing her next words very carefully.
"He was wrong about some things," she said.
"He was wrong to take the choice away from you.
He knew that, toward the end.
He told me — not in those words, but I understood." She paused.
"He wasn't wrong about what he felt."
I set the letter on top of the first one, on the entryway table.
Outside, a car went slowly down Carver Street.
The maple tree moved in the wind.
A few more leaves came down.
"What do I do with a house?" I said.
It came out smaller than I intended.
"Whatever you want," Dana said.
"That's rather the point."
I looked around the entryway again.
The slightly uneven floors.
The off-white walls.
The cedar smell.
The bird feeder in the backyard, still half-full.
"He kept the bird feeder stocked," I said.
"He liked watching them from the kitchen window.
In the mornings." Dana's voice was softer now.
"He said it was the best part of being up early."
I walked back to the kitchen.
Dana followed, a few steps behind.
I stood at the window over the sink and looked at the backyard.
The empty garden bed.
The maple's lowest branch.
The bird feeder swaying slightly.
Two sparrows landed on it while I was watching.
Behind me, Dana set her coffee cup on the counter.
"I'd like to come back," she said.
"If that's all right.
Not to manage anything.
Just — he was my brother.
And this was his house.
And I think I'd like to not be a stranger to the person who has it now."
I kept my eyes on the sparrows.
"Come on Tuesdays," I said.
"You're already in the habit."
She didn't answer right away.
When she did, her voice was careful and a little rough.
"All right," she said.
"Tuesdays."
I turned around.
She was standing in the kitchen doorway, her coat still on, her coffee cup in her hand.
She looked like someone who had been braced for a fight and didn't know what to do now that there wasn't one.
"Dana," I said.
"What did he d*e of?
Specifically.
He never told me."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"He had a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy," she said.
"His heart muscle was too thick.
It couldn't pump efficiently.
It gets worse over time." She paused.
"He was diagnosed fourteen months before he ended things with you."
Fourteen months.
He'd known for eight months before I ever noticed the change in him.
"He carried that alone for eight months," I said.
"He was very good at carrying things alone," Dana said.
"It was his worst quality."
She said it like she'd said it to him directly, more than once.
Like it was an old argument she'd lost.
May you like
I turned back to the window.
The sparrows were still there.
