Chapter 8: The Last Thing Douglas Said
We met him at Patricia's office this time.
He arrived with his attorney and without the careful composure of the first meeting.
He had seen the photographs Patricia had sent over the night before — the binders, the letters, the laptop, the sticky note.
He had had twelve hours to sit with twenty-two years of his brother's private grief.
He looked like a man who had not slept.
He sat down across from me and his attorney opened a folder and then closed it again without speaking.
"I didn't know," Douglas said.
It wasn't an apology.
It wasn't a concession.
It was just a statement, delivered to the table between us.
"He never told me he was looking for anyone," Douglas continued.
"He said — for years, he said — that he had made peace with how things turned out.
That he had no regrets about the marriage.
That it was a long time ago and it didn't matter anymore." He looked up.
"He lied to me for twenty years."
"He was protecting something," I said.
"From me," Douglas said.
"He was protecting it from me."
The room was quiet.
"Why?" I said.
"What would you have done?"
Douglas was silent for a long moment.
His attorney shifted beside him.
"I would have told him to stop," Douglas said finally.
"I would have told him it was a waste of time.
That the woman had clearly moved on and didn't want to be found and he should do the same." He paused.
"I would have been wrong."
Patricia didn't move.
I didn't move.
"I called him selfish once," Douglas said.
"When he told me the marriage had ended.
I said he was selfish for marrying so young and reckless for letting it fall apart and that he'd never had the discipline to hold anything together." He looked at his hands.
"He didn't argue with me.
He just nodded and changed the subject."
"He was already looking for her by then," I said.
"My mother.
He'd already started."
Douglas closed his eyes briefly.
"I know that now."
His attorney leaned over and said something quietly.
Douglas shook his head.
"I'm withdrawing the challenge," Douglas said.
"I want that on record.
Formally withdrawn, today."
Patricia made a note.
"I'm not doing it because of the evidence," Douglas said, looking at me directly.
"Although the evidence is — it's thorough.
Nathan was always thorough when it mattered to him." A pause.
"I'm doing it because I read the letters.
The ones he never sent.
And I recognized my brother in them.
The real one.
Not the one I'd decided he was."
I didn't say anything.
"He was happy," Douglas said.
"Those last six weeks.
His hospice nurse called me after he passed — I hadn't spoken to her before, I wasn't — I hadn't been visiting." He stopped.
Started again.
"She said he was the most peaceful she'd seen him.
That he had someone who came every day and brought him terrible coffee and made him laugh."
Something moved through my chest.
"It was terrible coffee," I said.
Douglas made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Almost.
"He left you everything," he said.
"And I think — I think he left it to the right person." He stood.
His attorney stood with him.
"I'm sorry for the last three weeks.
I'm sorry for what I called it."
He buttoned his jacket.
Same gesture as the first meeting, but slower.
At the door, he stopped.
"He had a photograph of your mother in his wallet," Douglas said.
"I found it when I was going through his things.
I didn't know who she was at the time." He reached into his jacket pocket and placed something on Patricia's desk.
"I'd like you to have it."
He left.
I walked to the desk.
It was a small photograph, wallet-sized, worn at the edges.
My mother, younger than in the beach photo, standing in front of a window.
She wasn't laughing this time.
She was just looking at the camera with an expression I recognized.
Like she was looking at someone she loved and trying to memorize the moment before it passed.
I turned it over.
On the back, in my mother's handwriting — handwriting I knew as well as my own — were two words.
May you like
*Don't forget.*
He hadn't.
