Chapter 5: Eleven Years of Letters He Never Sent
David took the phone from Carol.
He scrolled slowly, his face doing the thing it had done since he was a teenager — going deliberately blank when something was hitting him harder than he wanted to show.
"These go back three years," he said.
"There are hundreds of them."
"I know how many there are," Robert said.
"Then you know what's in them."
"I wrote them.
Yes.
I know what's in them."
Patrice put a hand on David's arm.
He didn't move away from it, but he didn't relax either.
"Read one," I said.
Robert looked at me sharply.
"Not to embarrass you," I said.
"I just need to understand what this was.
What you were doing in there, alone, for three years, that you couldn't do out here with us."
Thomas had not come further into the yard.
He was still near the gate, hands in his jacket pockets, watching with the careful stillness of a man who knows he is not yet welcome but has come anyway.
Robert was quiet for a long moment.
Then he held out his hand toward David.
David gave him the phone.
Robert looked at the screen.
He scrolled once, twice, then stopped.
He read in silence for a moment.
Then he read aloud.
*"Tom.
I don't know if you'll ever see this.
I've been writing to you for eight months and I'm starting to think this is just me talking to myself, which maybe is what I need.
Ellen is asleep.
She worries about me and I don't want her to.
I've been thinking about Mum's last year.
About how I handled it.
About how you handled it.
I think we were both wrong, and I think I was more wrong than you were, and I don't know how to say that to your face so I'm saying it here.
I'm sorry, Tom.
I don't expect anything from that.
I just needed to say it somewhere real."*
The yard was completely still.
Lucy had climbed onto the chair beside the ring box and was sitting with her knees pulled up, watching her grandfather.
"That was the first one he answered," Robert said.
He handed the phone back to David.
"He wrote back two days later.
One line.
*I know you are.
Me too.* That was it.
But it was enough."
Carol had her arms wrapped around herself.
"Why didn't you tell us you were trying to reach him?"
"Because I didn't know if it would work.
And because—" He stopped.
Started again.
"Because the falling-out wasn't only about the money or your grandmother's estate.
There were things said.
Things I said.
That I wasn't ready to explain to you."
"What things?" David asked.
Robert looked at Thomas.
Thomas took two steps into the yard.
His voice, when he used it, was lower than I remembered, worn at the edges.
"He told me I'd ruined the family," Thomas said.
"At Mum's funeral.
In front of people." He paused.
"He was wrong.
But I understood why he said it.
I'd made choices that hurt people.
I knew that.
I just — I needed someone to say it wasn't permanent.
That I wasn't permanent in that version of myself."
"And I couldn't say that then," Robert said.
"So I said the worst thing instead.
And then I spent eleven years not knowing how to unsay it."
I looked at my husband.
At the man who had slept in a recliner for six months because lying flat hurt too much.
Who had squeezed my hand in hospital corridors and whispered about dancing.
Who had, apparently, also been sitting alone in the dark writing letters to his brother because some griefs are too old and too complicated to bring into the light of a marriage without first knowing if they can survive it.
"You should have told me," I said.
"I know."
"I would have understood."
"I know that too." His voice was very quiet.
"I think that's why I couldn't.
Because you always understand.
And this one — this one I needed to fix myself first.
Or try to."
Thomas had reached the edge of the family circle.
He and Robert were ten feet apart.
Nobody pushed them toward each other.
Nobody spoke.
Robert stood up.
He crossed the distance in four steps and put his arms around his brother.
Thomas stood rigid for exactly one second.
Then his hands came up and gripped the back of Robert's jacket, and the eleven years between them collapsed into something that didn't have a name but didn't need one.
Lucy watched this with great seriousness.
Then she turned to me.
"Grandma," she said, "are you going to cry?"
"Probably," I said.
"Me too," she said.
And she climbed down from the chair and took my hand.
May you like
But Carol was still holding her phone.
And she hadn't put it away.
