Chapter 6: What Patricia Sent
The files arrived the next morning.
Patricia had scanned everything — forty-one pages of documents, letters, and photographs, organized by date, going back fifteen years.
I sat at the kitchen table with Ethan and we went through them together.
Most of it was what we expected.
Correspondence from the estate attorney.
The version of the will Diane had presented.
A letter from the executor.
A brief, formal note informing Patricia of her inheritance — the few hundred dollars, the personal items, the finality of it.
Then Ethan stopped turning pages.
"Look at this."
It was a letter.
Handwritten.
His grandfather's handwriting — I recognized it from the birthday cards Ethan still kept in his desk drawer.
The date at the top was four months before the old man died.
Ethan read it out loud.
*Patricia.
I know you haven't heard from me in some time.
Your mother tells me you've been busy and that you prefer it this way.
I don't know if that's true.
I hope it isn't.
I want you to know that whatever you may have been told, I have not changed how I feel about you.
You are my daughter.
That will never change.
I have made sure of that in writing.
Please don't let anyone tell you otherwise.*
Ethan set the letter down.
Neither of us spoke.
"He knew," I said finally.
"He knew something was wrong."
"He was trying to warn her."
"But she never got it."
Ethan turned the page.
Behind the letter was an envelope.
Unopened.
Patricia's name and address in the same handwriting.
A stamp in the corner.
And across the front, in different handwriting — Diane's handwriting — three words.
*Return to sender.*
My stomach dropped.
"She intercepted it," I said.
"She intercepted it and sent it back." Ethan's voice was very quiet.
"Patricia never read this.
She never knew he wrote it."
I looked at the envelope.
At those three words in Diane's neat, controlled script.
"We need to send this to the attorney," I said.
"I already texted her." He was already typing.
"She wants everything Patricia sent.
She says this changes the picture significantly."
I picked up the envelope carefully, by the edges.
"Ethan.
Patricia needs to read this letter."
He looked up.
"I know." He swallowed.
"I don't know how to tell her it existed.
That it was sitting in a box for eleven years and she never knew."
"You tell her the truth.
The same way you've been telling it all along."
He nodded slowly.
Then he called her.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Patricia.
I need to read you something."
I watched his face while he read the letter to her.
I watched the way he had to stop once, clear his throat, and start the sentence again.
When he finished, the line was silent for a long time.
Then Patricia said: "He wrote that."
"Yes."
"He actually wrote that."
"Yes.
And he sent it.
Your mother returned it before it reached you."
Another silence.
Longer.
"Eleven years," she said.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"I know."
"He didn't — he never stopped—"
"No," Ethan said.
"He never stopped."
I heard her crying then.
Not loudly.
The kind of crying that has been held in for a very long time.
Ethan pressed the phone against his ear and didn't say anything.
He just stayed on the line.
After a while she said: "What do we do now?"
May you like
"Now we let the attorney do her job," he said.
"And we make sure this letter is the first thing the court sees."
