Chapter 4: The Letter That Was Never Supposed to Reach Me
Carol Simmons had an office on the fourth floor of a building downtown that smelled like old carpet and fresh coffee.
She was sixty-one, compact, and had the kind of stillness that made people confess things they hadn't planned to say.
I had found her through a colleague at the base.
I had called her the day after Iris was born, still in the hospital bed, still in the paper gown.
She had listened to everything.
She had not once told me I was overreacting.
I sat across from her desk three days after Diane's visit, Iris asleep in the carrier against my chest, and slid a handwritten note across the desk.
"Diane admitted Gerald Marsh has been holding a letter from my grandmother.
Addressed to me.
For eleven years."
Carol read the note.
Set it down.
Picked up her pen.
"Did she say what was in it?"
"No.
She said she told him not to send it because it would cause pain."
"Whose pain?"
"She didn't specify."
Carol wrote something on her legal pad.
"I'll contact Gerald's office today.
If the letter was left as part of the estate documents, he had a legal obligation to deliver it to you when you came of age.
Withholding it on a family member's instruction is a serious problem for him professionally."
"Will he give it up?"
"He will if he wants to keep his license." She set the pen down.
"Elena, I want to ask you something, and I want you to think before you answer."
I nodded.
"Is there any possibility your grandmother left you something in that letter — not just words — that your mother didn't want you to have?"
I hadn't let myself think it that directly.
I thought it now.
"She had a property," I said slowly.
"A small house.
About forty minutes outside the city.
She called it the lake house, but it wasn't really on a lake — just near one.
She used to take me there when I was small.
Just the two of us." I paused.
"It wasn't in the estate documents Carol filed with the court.
I checked."
Carol's expression didn't change, but she picked up her pen again.
"It wasn't listed," she said.
"No."
"And your mother has been living on what income since your grandmother passed?"
The question sat between us like a stone dropped in still water.
"She sold a property," I said.
"About ten years ago.
She told us it was an investment property she and my father had purchased together before he left."
Carol wrote for a long moment without speaking.
"I'll need the address of the lake house," she said.
"If you remember it."
I did remember it.
I had never forgotten it.
My grandmother used to sit on the back step with a cup of tea and call it her thinking place.
She had told me once, when I was seven, that she was going to leave it to someone who would actually sit still long enough to think.
I gave Carol the address.
Two days later, Carol called me while I was feeding Iris at two in the morning, the kitchen dark except for the small light above the stove.
"The property transferred," Carol said.
"Eleven years ago.
One month after your grandmother's death."
My hand went still on Iris's back.
"To whom?"
"To your mother.
Via a deed of gift." A pause.
"Signed by your grandmother."
"That's legal."
"It is.
Unless the signature was obtained under duress, or unless a separate testamentary document — say, a letter — contradicts the intent." Another pause.
"Gerald is meeting with me Thursday morning.
He's bringing the letter."
I looked at Iris.
Her eyes were closed.
Her whole body rose and fell with each breath, slow and certain.
"Carol," I said.
"Whatever is in that letter — I want to be there."
"I know," she said.
"That's why I scheduled it for ten.
I'll have coffee waiting."
She hung up.
I sat in the dark kitchen for a long time after that, Iris warm against my arm, the small stove light holding us both in its narrow circle.
May you like
Thursday felt very far away.
And very close.
