Chapter 4: The Summer Before Everything
I folded the letter along its original crease and held it flat against my chest for a moment before I turned around.
All six of them were still watching me.
"Sit down," I said.
"All of you.
This is going to take a while."
They found chairs, dragged them into a loose circle near the center of the room.
The birthday banner hung above us.
*Happy 60th, Mom.* The candles on the cake had burned down to stubs while we weren't paying attention.
I sat in the chair Sarah pulled forward for me and I looked at my children — really looked at them — and I thought: they are adults.
Every one of them.
They have marriages and mortgages and children of their own.
They found eleven hidden letters and drove here and arranged a police officer and a surprise party because they didn't know how else to give me something this large.
They deserved the truth.
"Robert Calloway," I said.
"I knew him the summer I was twenty-two.
Before I met your father."
"How well did you know him?" Daniel asked.
"Well enough," I said.
"We were together for almost two years.
He was from a small town in Yorkshire.
He'd come to London for work.
We met at a friend's flat and we were — " I paused.
"We were very serious."
"What happened?" Judith asked.
"His family happened," I said.
"His mother, specifically.
She didn't think I was suitable.
I wasn't from the right place, didn't have the right background.
She made it very clear that if Robert married me, she would cut him off entirely.
His father was ill.
There was a family business.
Robert was the only son."
"And he chose the family," Daniel said.
"It wasn't that simple."
"Mom.
Did he choose the family or not?"
I looked at my eldest son.
He had his father's jaw and my mother's eyes and sometimes the combination of the two made it difficult to look at him directly.
"He asked me to wait," I said.
"He said he needed time to manage his father's illness, to stabilize the business, to bring his mother around slowly.
He said six months.
Maybe a year."
"But you didn't wait," Sarah said.
She wasn't accusing me.
She was trying to understand.
"I waited eight months," I said.
"I wrote to him every week.
He wrote back at first, then less often, then not at all.
And then I met your father at a work Christmas party and he was charming and funny and he wanted a loud house and a full table and I thought — " I stopped.
"You thought Robert was gone," Cara said softly.
"I thought he had made his choice," I said.
"So I made mine."
Tom leaned forward.
"But he kept writing."
"Apparently," I said.
"To an address my mother was collecting the post from.
She'd been forwarding my mail to her house while I was between flats.
I never updated the arrangement because I didn't think it mattered."
"She kept them from you on purpose," Tom said.
"I don't know what she knew or didn't know," I said, though even as I said it I could feel the shape of the lie.
I did know.
My mother had never liked Robert.
She'd said so plainly.
*He'll break your heart, Eleanor.
Men like that always go back to what they know.*
She had been determined to be right.
"There are ten more letters," Sarah said.
"Do you want to read them now or — "
"Later," I said.
"I'll read them later."
"Mom." Sarah set the stack on the chair beside me.
"The last one was posted eight months ago."
The room shifted.
Eight months ago, Robert Calloway had still been writing to an address that had not been mine for thirty years.
Writing to a woman he had no way of knowing had long since become someone else, built a life, raised six children, buried a marriage, and was currently sitting in a community hall in front of a cake she hadn't touched.
"Eight months ago," I repeated.
"The postmark is clear," Sarah said.
"And Mom — the return address on that one is different.
It's not Yorkshire anymore."
She handed me the last envelope separately.
I looked at the return address.
It was a town forty minutes from where I was sitting.
Robert Calloway had been forty minutes away for — I looked at the postmark more carefully — at least the past two years.
Daniel stood up from his chair.
"I'm going to get you some water."
He was already moving toward the back of the hall before I could answer, which meant he needed a moment as much as I did.
I looked at the last envelope in my hand and I thought about my mother in her bedroom with the loose board at the back of the wardrobe, and I thought about thirty years, and I thought about a railway platform and a suitcase and a reason I had never fully explained.
"Sarah," I said.
"Yes."
"Did any of you open this one?"
She shook her head.
I set it on top of the stack and pressed my palm flat against it.
"Good," I said.
"Neither will I.
Not tonight."
But Bess, my youngest, who had been quiet the whole time, said from her chair in a voice that was very careful and very gentle, "Mom, there was something else in the wardrobe.
Behind the letters."
I looked at her.
She reached into her bag and placed a photograph on the chair beside the envelopes.
I recognized the photograph immediately.
I had not seen it in thirty years, but I recognized it the way you recognize a song you haven't heard since you were young — instantly, completely, in the body before the mind catches up.
It was Robert and me on a beach in Cornwall.
Summer.
We were both laughing at something outside the frame.
May you like
On the back, in my mother's handwriting: *Eleanor.
Before she knew better.*
