Chapter 4: Everything He Should Have Said
The room was small and very quiet.
Thomas was propped against two pillows, a monitor beside him tracking his heart in green lines.
He looked smaller than he had the night before.
But when I walked through the door, his eyes opened and he found me immediately, the way you find something you have been looking for in the dark.
"Eleanor."
"Don't you dare apologize," I said.
"Not yet.
Not until I've said what I need to say."
A sound came out of him that might have been a laugh.
"All right," he said.
I pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down.
I took the envelope from my pocket and set it on the blanket between us.
"Tell me yourself," I said.
"Whatever's in here — tell me yourself."
He looked at the envelope for a long moment.
"I was going to," he said.
"Last night.
I had it planned.
The bar, the walk, the drink.
I was going to tell you over that gin and then give you the letter so you'd have it in writing.
Something to hold." He paused.
"Then my chest started tightening on the walk home and I thought — I just need to get inside.
I just need to sit down.
And then I don't remember much after that."
"Your neighbor found you."
"Gerald.
Good man." He shifted against the pillow.
"Eleanor, I need you to know why I left.
Fifty years ago."
"I'm listening."
He looked at the ceiling for a moment, then back at me.
"My father," he said.
"He came to me three weeks after we met.
He'd had you investigated.
A private investigator.
Two weeks of following you, talking to people who knew you." His jaw tightened.
"He told me that if I continued seeing you, he would cut off my younger brother's education funding.
Daniel was seventeen.
He had a place at university.
My father controlled every penny."
I stared at him.
"He threatened your brother."
"He said it plainly.
Stop seeing Eleanor or Daniel loses everything." Thomas's voice was steady but his hands, resting on the blanket, were not.
"I was twenty-nine.
I thought I was protecting Daniel.
I thought — you'd move on.
I thought you'd find someone.
I thought it was the right thing."
"You could have told me."
"I know."
"You could have told me and let me decide."
"I know that too." He met my eyes.
"I was a coward.
I told myself I was being noble and I was a coward.
I have known that for fifty years."
The monitor beeped steadily between us.
"Did Daniel know?" I said.
"Not until last year.
When I told him about the diagnosis, I told him everything.
He was — " Thomas stopped.
"He was not well with it.
He called our father's memory things I won't repeat."
"Your father is gone?"
"Twenty years ago."
I sat with that for a moment.
"And you found me," I said.
"After all this time."
"I looked for you before.
Twice.
Once in my forties and once at sixty-five.
The first time I found out you were married.
I didn't want to disrupt that." He watched my face.
"Were you happy?
With him?"
"Yes," I said.
"We had thirty-one good years.
He died four years ago."
Thomas closed his eyes briefly.
"I'm glad you were happy," he said.
"I mean that."
"I know you do."
I picked up the envelope.
I turned it over in my hands.
My name in his handwriting — the same slanted letters I remembered from a note he had passed me across a table fifty years ago, a joke about something neither of us could remember now.
"Should I still read it?" I said.
"There's more in there than what I just told you," he said.
"Things I couldn't say out loud.
Not the first time." He looked at me.
"But I'd rather you read it here.
While I can see your face."
I opened the envelope.
The letter was four pages, handwritten, dated three weeks earlier.
I read the first line and had to stop.
*Eleanor — if you are reading this, then I ran out of time to say it properly, which would be entirely in keeping with my record where you are concerned.*
A sound came out of me that was not quite a laugh and not quite anything else.
"Keep reading," Thomas said softly.
Outside the room, the hospital went about its business.
Somewhere down the corridor a door opened and closed.
The green line on the monitor kept its rhythm.
I turned to page two.
And then I read something that made me lower the letter to my lap and look at him.
"Thomas," I said.
"This part.
About the photograph.
The one with my face circled in red."
His expression changed.
"I didn't circle it," he said.
"Then who did?"
May you like
He was quiet for just a moment too long.
"That," he said carefully, "is something Diane needs to explain."
