Chapter 7: His Own Words
The letter was four pages, handwritten on the same cream paper Greg used for important things — the kind he kept in the top drawer of his desk and brought out for thank-you notes and formal correspondence.
His handwriting was uneven in places, like he'd stopped and started several times.
*El,*
*If you're reading this, then I didn't find the right moment.
I'm sorry for that.
I kept thinking there would be more time.
There's always more time, until there isn't.*
*I need to tell you something I should have told you years ago.
Maybe decades ago.
I've written this letter four times and thrown it away four times, and this is the version I'm giving to Diane because I trust her to make sure you get it if I can't give it to you myself.*
*You know about Diane now, or some of it.
I want you to know all of it.*
I read slowly.
He explained it the way Diane had, but in his own voice — halting in places, more direct in others.
He wrote about being seventeen and scared and doing the best he could with what he had.
He wrote about the two weeks after, sitting with Diane on her parents' porch, not knowing what to say but knowing he had to be there.
Then he wrote about us.
*I met you three years later and I thought — I genuinely thought — that the past was the past and that it didn't need to travel with us.
I was wrong about that.
Not because it was shameful.
Because it was mine, and I should have shared it with you.
You were my partner.
You deserved to know who you were partnering with.*
*I told myself I'd tell you on our fifth anniversary.
Then our tenth.
Then when the kids were grown.
Then when we retired.
I kept moving the moment forward and the moment kept letting me.*
*When Diane reached out four years ago, I realized I'd been carrying this alone for so long that I'd almost convinced myself it hadn't happened.
Hearing from her made it real again.
And real things need to be said out loud.*
*I should have told you then.
I'm sorry I didn't.*
I set the pages down for a moment.
The kitchen was quiet.
The tea had gone cold.
I picked the letter back up.
*Here is what I want you to know, El.
Not the history.
The truth underneath the history.*
*You were never second.
You were never a replacement for something I lost.
You were the person I chose, every day, for thirty-six years.
Every ordinary Tuesday.
Every grocery run.
Every dentist appointment.
Every outside seat at every restaurant.*
*I loved you in a way I didn't have the vocabulary for at seventeen.
I loved you in the way that only works when you're old enough to know what love actually costs.*
*There's one more thing.
Raymond will explain the details, but I want you to hear it from me first.*
*Diane's daughter — her name is Carol — spent most of her adult life not knowing why her mother carried such a specific sadness.
Diane never told her about the pregnancy.
But two years ago, Carol was diagnosed with a genetic condition.
Her doctors asked about family history.
Diane had to tell her some of it.
Not everything.
But enough that Carol started asking questions.*
*I set aside money for Carol's medical care.
Not a large amount — enough to help with what insurance won't cover.
I did it because I felt responsible, even after all this time.
Even at sixty-eight years old, I still felt responsible.*
*I should have told you before I did it.
That was wrong of me.
I'm asking for your forgiveness, and I'm asking you to let it stand.*
*You are the most capable person I have ever known.
You will be all right.
You will be more than all right.*
*I love you, El.
I always will.*
*— G*
I folded the letter carefully along its original creases.
I sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
Outside, a car passed.
A dog barked somewhere down the street.
The refrigerator hummed.
I thought about thirty-six years of outside seats at restaurants.
I thought about a seventeen-year-old boy showing up every day for two weeks because he didn't know what else to do except stay.
I thought about the word *responsible* — how Greg had carried it like a stone in his pocket his whole life, smooth from handling.
I wasn't angry.
I had expected to be angry.
I had braced for it on the drive home, on the walk from the car, while the kettle boiled.
But sitting there with his four pages in my hands, what I felt was something quieter and more complicated than anger.
I felt like I had just met a part of my husband I hadn't known existed.
And I was glad I'd met him.
Tomorrow, Raymond Chu would explain the will.
There would be paperwork.
There would be decisions.
There would be a version of the future I hadn't planned for.
May you like
But tonight, I just sat with Greg's letter in my hands.
And I let myself feel all of it.
