Chapter 4: What Nadia Left Behind
I told myself it wasn't my business.
I told myself that for four days.
On the fifth day I ran into Diane at the school gate and she said, "I found out a bit more about Carol."
We stepped to one side, away from the other parents.
"She and Nadia were close growing up," Diane said.
"Really close.
But something happened in the last year — when Nadia got the diagnosis.
Carol apparently didn't believe it at first.
Thought Nadia was exaggerating.
They'd had a complicated relationship, I think.
History there."
"She didn't believe her own sister was seriously ill?"
"Or she didn't want to.
There's a difference." Diane paused.
"By the time Carol understood how bad it was, Nadia had maybe three months left.
Carol came back.
Tried to make up for lost time.
But Nadia's husband — his name is Patrick, by the way — he'd been there for all of it.
Every appointment.
Every bad night.
He'd watched Nadia wait for her sister to show up and he'd watched her stop waiting."
I thought about Patrick's face in the corridor.
The way he had stayed so still while the mothers spoke.
"So he blames Carol."
"He blames her for the months Nadia spent hoping she'd come.
That's what I was told." Diane looked toward the school doors.
"And apparently Nadia left something for Carol.
A letter, or a message of some kind.
Patrick has it.
He's never given it to her."
I stopped.
"He's kept it?"
"For two years."
"Why?"
Diane shook her head.
"Nobody knows.
Maybe he can't.
Maybe he thinks Nadia was too forgiving and Carol didn't earn it.
Or maybe he just hasn't been able to open that part of it yet."
The school bell rang.
Children began to come out.
Goldie came through the doors in a group of girls, all of them talking at once.
Her braid was slightly looser than it had been in the morning — one ribbon had slipped — and she was laughing at something, her head thrown back.
She didn't look like a child carrying grief.
She looked like a child who had learned to carry it so well it had become part of her posture.
I thought about what she had said in the corridor.
*He cries when he brushes it.*
He was keeping the hair for Nadia.
He was keeping the ritual for Nadia.
He was keeping the date — seventeen, the age Nadia was the first time he touched her hair — because that was the only way he knew how to keep her.
And somewhere in this town, Carol was carrying a letter she had never been allowed to read.
I didn't plan what happened next.
I want to be clear about that.
I was at the supermarket two days later, in the bread aisle, when I turned a corner and nearly walked into Carol.
She recognized me immediately.
Her expression shifted — not unfriendly, but careful.
"I'm sorry about the other night," she said.
"I shouldn't have approached you like that."
"It's all right."
She didn't move away.
Neither did I.
"She's doing well," I said.
"Goldie.
She's a happy kid."
Carol's hand tightened on the handle of her basket.
"I know.
I've — I've watched from a distance.
School events, sometimes.
He doesn't know.
Or if he does, he doesn't say anything."
"He knew you were there the other night."
She looked at me.
"Did he say something?"
"No.
He just looked for you when the lights came up.
His face didn't change.
But he looked."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I made a terrible mistake," she said.
"I know that.
I knew it before Nadia was gone and I've known it every day since." She stopped.
Steadied herself.
"I just don't know if there's any way back from it.
For Goldie, I mean.
Not for me.
I've accepted what I deserve.
But Goldie lost her mother and she also lost — she doesn't even know she lost me.
She was too young."
"She was seven when Nadia d*ed?"
"Six.
She won't remember me at all." Carol's voice was flat in the way voices go flat when they are holding something very large very still.
"Nadia would have wanted her to know me.
I know she would have.
She was — she was always the forgiving one."
I thought about the letter Patrick had never given her.
I didn't say anything about it.
It wasn't mine to say.
But walking back to my car, I thought about Patrick in that school corridor, pins in his hand, jaw tight, eyes wet, and I wondered if the letter was the thing he couldn't let go of — not because he was cruel, but because giving it to Carol meant accepting that Nadia had forgiven her.
And he wasn't ready for that yet.
My phone buzzed as I reached the car.
It was a message from Diane.
*Patrick asked the school if you'd be willing to talk to him.
He got your number from the parent contact list.
He said it's about the other night.*
May you like
I sat in the car for a long moment.
Then I typed back: *Tell him yes.*
