Chapter 6: The Last Letter
Mr.
Hale's office was on the second floor of a building on the main street, above a pharmacy that had been there since before I was born.
The stairs were narrow.
The waiting room smelled of old paper and wood polish.
Daniel was already there when I arrived.
He was standing at the window with a paper cup of coffee he hadn't drunk.
He turned when I came in and gave a short nod.
"He's ready for us," Daniel said.
Mr.
Hale's office was small and orderly.
Two chairs had been placed in front of his desk.
He stood when we entered, shook both our hands, and waited until we were seated before he sat down himself.
On the desk between us was an envelope.
Cream-colored.
Sealed.
Thomas's handwriting on the front.
*For Daniel.
To be opened with Eleanor present.*
Mr.
Hale folded his hands.
"Thomas gave me very specific instructions about this letter.
He asked that I be present, that both of you be present, and that it be read aloud." He looked at Daniel.
"He wanted Eleanor to hear it at the same time as you.
Not before.
Not after."
Daniel looked at the envelope.
"Why?"
"He said — and I'm quoting him directly — 'Because Daniel will have questions, and Eleanor will have the answers, and they should be in the same room when that happens.'"
Daniel reached forward and picked up the envelope.
He broke the seal carefully.
His hands were steady.
He unfolded two pages of Thomas's handwriting and looked at them for a moment without reading.
Then he began.
*"Daniel.
If you're reading this, then you've met Eleanor, and knowing you, you've already decided you have questions.
Good.
You should.
Here are the answers."*
Daniel's voice was level.
Controlled.
*"Eleanor and I loved each other when we were seventeen.
She left for college.
I stayed.
I told her she'd broken my heart, and I meant it.
But I was wrong to say it the way I did.
She had every right to go.
I was too young to understand that then."*
Daniel paused.
He glanced at me briefly, then continued.
*"I bought the house on Maple Street the year after she left.
Not because I was certain she'd come back.
Because I needed something to believe in.
The house was that thing.
Every year I maintained it, I was telling myself — and telling her, even though she couldn't hear me — that the door was still open."*
*"I met your mother two years later.
Carol was kind and warm and she deserved better than a man who was still half in love with someone else.
I want you to know that I loved your mother.
Not the way I loved Eleanor — that was something different, something from before I knew how much life could ask of you.
But I loved her truly, and I was faithful to her, and when she left us I grieved her completely."*
Daniel's jaw tightened.
He kept reading.
*"I never told you about Eleanor because I didn't know how.
Every year it became harder.
She was the part of me that existed before you, before the business, before everything I became.
She felt like a secret not because she was shameful but because she was sacred.
I was wrong to keep her from you.
That is the one thing in this letter I am asking your forgiveness for."*
The room was very quiet.
*"Now.
The thing I need you to know."*
Daniel turned to the second page.
*"Eleanor does not know this.
I am telling you both at the same time because you both deserve the truth."*
*"When Eleanor left for college, she wrote to me.
One letter.
I received it three months after she'd gone.
In it, she told me she was sorry for leaving the way she had.
She said she hoped I would understand someday.
She said she thought about me every day."*
*"I never wrote back."*
*"I was hurt and I was proud and I was twenty years old and I made the worst decision of my life.
I put her letter in a box and I told myself I would reply when I was ready.
I was never ready.
The years passed.
And the letter stayed in the box."*
Daniel looked up at me.
I had gone very still.
*"Eleanor,"* Daniel read, his voice quieter now, *"the letter is in the box Mr.
Hale gave you.
Underneath the keys.
In the small brown envelope at the bottom.
I kept it for fifty-four years.
I am sorry it took me this long to send it back to you."*
Mr.
Hale was watching me.
I thought about the box.
The keys.
The letter I had read.
The second envelope I had opened.
I had not looked beneath the keys.
I had not seen a small brown envelope.
"I need to go home," I said.
My voice was very calm.
I was not calm.
Daniel stood when I stood.
"Eleanor."
I looked at him.
"He loved you," Daniel said.
"The whole time.
He was just — he was afraid." A beat.
"He was human."
I nodded.
I couldn't speak.
I was already thinking about the box.
May you like
About what was waiting at the bottom of it.
About a letter I had written when I was twenty years old, that had been read once and kept for fifty-four years by a man who never stopped believing I would come home.
