Chapter 5: What Patrick Needed to Say
He suggested the café near the library.
Quiet, he said.
Easier to talk.
I got there first and took a table near the window.
He arrived five minutes later, still in his work clothes — a fleece over a collared shirt, the kind of clothes that said he had come straight from somewhere practical.
He looked like a man who spent his days solving problems with his hands.
He ordered a coffee.
I already had one.
He sat down and looked at the table for a moment before he looked at me.
"I wanted to thank you," he said.
"For not making it worse.
In the corridor.
Some of the others —" He stopped.
"It doesn't matter."
"They felt terrible afterward," I said.
"I know." He wrapped both hands around his mug.
"Goldie doesn't hold it against them.
She's not built that way."
"She's remarkable."
"She's her mother." He said it simply, without performance.
Just a fact he had accepted.
"Everything good in her is Nadia."
I waited.
"Diane told me you spoke to Carol," he said.
"Briefly.
At the supermarket.
It wasn't planned."
He nodded slowly.
"What did she say?"
I thought about how to answer that carefully.
"She said she made a terrible mistake.
She said she knows it.
She said she's accepted what she deserves." I paused.
"She said Goldie doesn't know she lost her.
And that Nadia would have wanted them to know each other."
Patrick's hands tightened around the mug.
He didn't speak for a moment.
"Nadia did want that," he said finally.
"She told me.
Near the end." His voice was even, but only just.
"She said — don't let Carol disappear from Goldie's life because of me.
Because of what happened between us.
She said children need family."
"But you haven't—"
"No." He set the mug down.
"I haven't."
The café was quiet around us.
A woman at the counter was ordering something.
Outside, a bus went past.
"She left Carol a letter," he said.
"Nadia did.
She wrote it herself, in the last few weeks.
She asked me to give it to Carol after." He stopped.
"I haven't been able to."
"Because of what it might say?"
He looked at me directly for the first time.
"Because of what it definitely says.
I read it." His jaw moved.
"Once.
Two years ago.
Then I put it away."
"She forgave her."
It wasn't a question.
He heard that.
"Completely," he said.
"Without conditions.
In Nadia's handwriting, in Nadia's words, she told Carol that she understood, that she didn't blame her, that she loved her, and that she wanted Carol to be part of Goldie's life." He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"And I have been sitting on that letter for two years because every time I think about giving it to her, I think about the months Nadia waited.
I think about the phone calls Nadia made that Carol didn't return.
I think about Nadia telling Goldie that Auntie Carol was just very busy right now."
His voice didn't break.
But it came close.
"She was six," he said.
"Goldie was six years old and she was telling her that Auntie Carol was just very busy."
I didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say that would help.
"I know I'm wrong to keep it," he said.
"I know that.
Nadia asked me to do one thing and I haven't done it.
I tell myself it's because Carol doesn't deserve it.
But Nadia didn't write it for Carol's sake." He looked at the window.
"She wrote it for Goldie's."
The words landed in the space between us.
He picked up his mug.
Put it down again without drinking.
"I think I needed to say that out loud to someone who doesn't know all of us," he said.
"Someone who could just hear it."
"I'm glad you did."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then: "She comes to the school events.
Carol.
I've known for a while.
I don't stop her." He looked at his hands.
"I don't know what that means.
I don't know if I'm punishing her by keeping the letter or protecting myself.
Probably both."
Outside, a woman walked past with a small girl — not Goldie, just a child — and the girl was skipping, pulling at the woman's hand, trying to go faster.
Patrick watched them through the glass.
"Nadia would know what to do," he said quietly.
"She always did."
He paid for both coffees before I could reach for my purse.
At the door he stopped and turned back.
"Don't tell Carol about the letter yet," he said.
"Please.
I need — I need a little more time."
"Of course," I said.
He nodded once.
Pushed the door open.
Walked out into the grey afternoon.
I sat with my empty cup and thought about a letter sitting in a drawer somewhere, written in a dying woman's handwriting, full of forgiveness that hadn't been delivered yet.
May you like
And I thought about Goldie, nine years old, her braid pinned up, her voice clear, standing in front of her father and saying: *Don't talk to my dad like that.*
She had no idea what was waiting for her.
