Chapter 6: Eleven Letters in Order
I started reading at six in the morning, when the light was still gray and the house was completely still.
I made fresh tea.
I sat at the kitchen table.
I put the letters in order by postmark — the earliest first — and I opened them one by one.
The first three were from the year I had left London.
Robert's handwriting was urgent in those ones, the letters slightly pressed into the page as though he'd been bearing down on the pen.
*Eleanor, I have written twice and had no reply.
I am beginning to think the letters aren't reaching you.
Please write back, even a single line, so I know you are well.*
*Eleanor, I spoke to a mutual friend who told me you have moved.
I don't have your new address.
I am sending this to your mother's house in the hope that she will forward it.
My father passed away last month.
I am sorry I was not in contact during this time.
There is a great deal I need to explain.*
*Eleanor, it has been seven months.
I don't know if you are choosing not to reply or if something has gone wrong with the post.
I need you to know that what I said on the platform was not the whole truth.
I was frightened and I said less than I meant.
If you are reading this, please — just tell me you received it.*
I had to stop after the third one.
I got up and stood at the kitchen window for a while, looking at the garden.
The apple tree I'd planted when Bess was born was dropping the last of its leaves.
The bird feeder Tom had put up two summers ago needed filling.
I went back to the table.
The fourth letter was quieter.
Resigned, almost.
*I've heard through a friend that you've married.
I want you to know that I am glad you are not alone.
I mean that sincerely.
I hope he is good to you and I hope you are happy.
I won't write again after this.
But I wanted you to know that what we had was real to me.
It still is.*
He had written again, though.
Seven more times over thirty years.
The fifth came a decade later.
His mother had passed.
He was writing, he said, not to disturb her life but because he had found an old photograph and it had undone him for a week and he felt he owed her an explanation he had never given.
*I was a coward, Eleanor.
I told myself I was being responsible.
I told myself I was protecting the family, the business, my father's legacy.
But the truth is I was afraid of my mother, and I let that fear cost us both something I have never stopped regretting.*
The sixth, seventh, and eighth were spaced years apart.
Each one shorter.
Each one more careful, as though he had learned to say only what was necessary.
The ninth one made me set down my tea.
*I have a son.
His name is James.
He is twenty-three now and he is a good man, better than I deserve.
His mother passed four years ago.
I am telling you this not to ask for anything, but because I have spent thirty years writing letters I was never sure you received, and I have decided that honesty, even into silence, is better than nothing.*
The tenth was from two years ago.
*I have moved.
I am enclosing my new address.
I don't expect you to use it.
But if you ever wanted to, it is there.*
The eleventh — the last one, eight months ago, with the different return address — was the shortest of all.
Three sentences.
*Eleanor.
A solicitor will be in touch.
There is something you need to know that cannot be said in a letter.*
I read those three sentences four times.
Then I went and found the printout Sarah had given me the night before.
The legal notice.
The solicitor's address.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I picked up my phone and called Sarah.
She answered on the second ring.
"Mom.
How are you?"
"I've read them all," I said.
A pause.
"And?"
"He wrote to me for thirty years," I said.
"My mother returned the first ones and kept the rest.
He never knew if I received a single letter."
Sarah was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Oh, Mom."
"He has a solicitor," I said.
"There's something he needs to tell me that he says can't go in a letter."
"Are you going to contact them?"
I looked at the eleven envelopes spread across my kitchen table.
Thirty years of someone reaching across a silence they didn't know had been manufactured.
"I already looked up the number," I said.
"Mom." Sarah's voice was careful.
"What do you think it is?
What he needs to tell you?"
I had been asking myself that since six in the morning.
"I don't know," I said.
"But I'm going to find out."
I said goodbye, hung up, and dialed the solicitor's number before I could think about it long enough to stop.
The phone rang three times.
A woman answered.
"Hartley and Associates, good morning."
"My name is Eleanor," I said.
"Eleanor Marsh.
I believe you've been looking for me."
A pause.
Longer than a normal pause.
"Mrs.
Marsh," the woman said, and her voice had shifted into something careful and deliberate.
"Please hold.
Mr.
Hartley will want to speak with you personally."
May you like
The hold music was something classical I didn't recognize.
I sat at my kitchen table with eleven open letters spread in front of me and I waited.
