Chapter 4: What the Letter Said
The paper inside was one sheet.
Folded twice.
The handwriting was the same — small and slanted, pressed hard into the page the way Ray always wrote when he was agitated.
I read it once.
Then I set it down.
"What does it say?" David asked.
I pushed it across the table to him.
He read it.
His face was still, but a muscle in his jaw moved.
The letter said: *I need to talk to you.
I know you think it's over but there are things you don't know.
Things you were never told.
I'm not asking for anything.
I just need one conversation.
Gary knows where you are.
He can bring you to me.
Please don't ignore this.
You'll want to hear what I have to say.
— R*
David set the letter down.
"He thinks Gary is going to escort you to him," he said.
"Apparently."
"That's not a request.
That's a plan."
"I know."
We sat with that for a moment.
"What things?" David said.
"What does he mean, things you were never told?"
"I have no idea." I pulled the letter back and read it again.
*Things you were never told.* "He used to say things like that when we were married.
Whenever I tried to leave a conversation, he'd say there was something I didn't understand yet.
Something I was missing.
It was a way of keeping me in the room."
"So it might be nothing."
"It might be nothing." I folded the letter.
"Or it might be something he genuinely believes I need to know.
With Ray, it was always hard to tell the difference."
"We're calling the police."
"David—"
"Someone has been standing outside our house in the middle of the night for three weeks.
Your ex-husband sent an unsigned letter through his brother.
That's harassment.
That's possibly more than harassment."
"I know.
You're right." I pressed my fingers against my eyes.
"I just — I want to know what he means first.
What he thinks I don't know."
"We can find that out with a police report on record."
He was right.
I knew he was right.
But something in the letter had snagged on a part of my memory I hadn't visited in a long time.
*Things you were never told.* There had been a period near the end of the marriage — the last six months — when Ray had become secretive in a way that frightened me.
Phone calls he took in other rooms.
A second email account I found by accident.
A trip he said was for work that I later found out was not for work.
I had left before I found out what any of it meant.
I had decided I didn't need to know.
I had just needed to get out.
"There's something I never told you," I said.
David waited.
"When I left Ray, I didn't leave because he was cruel to me.
Not directly.
He never raised his voice.
He never — it wasn't that kind of marriage." I paused.
"I left because I felt like I was disappearing.
Like every year I was a little less of a person and a little more of something he kept in the house.
And near the end, I started to feel like he was hiding something from me.
Something significant.
I never found out what."
"And now he says you were never told."
"Yes."
David picked up his phone.
"I'm calling the non-emergency line tonight.
We're filing a report.
And tomorrow, I want a camera on every exterior corner of this house."
I didn't argue.
He made the call.
I listened to him explain it calmly — the dates, the car, the plate number, the letter.
His voice was steady.
He had already thought through what to say.
While he was on the phone, my own phone lit up on the counter.
Unknown number.
I let it ring.
It rang seven times and stopped.
Then a text came through from the same number.
*I saw the light on.
I know you're home.
I just want to talk, Ellen.
That's all I've ever wanted.*
I stared at the name he'd used.
Ellen.
No one had called me that in eleven years.
When I left Ray, I had gone back to my maiden name.
Back to my full name.
Everyone in my life now knew me as Ellie.
Ray had always refused to call me Ellie.
He said Ellen was more serious.
More fitting.
I set the phone face-down on the counter without responding.
David finished the call and turned around.
He saw my expression.
"What happened?"
I turned the phone over and showed him the screen.
He read it.
Then he looked at the window.
"He's close," David said.
"Yes."
"He might be outside right now."
We both looked at the dark glass of the kitchen window.
The yard beyond it.
The driveway.
The street.
May you like
Nothing moved.
But that, I was beginning to understand, meant nothing at all.
