Chapter 6: The Second Letter
Diane drove over that afternoon with a sealed envelope in her hand.
It was cream-colored, the same stationery Thomas had used for years.
My name was written on the front in his handwriting.
Beneath it, in smaller letters: *Only if she found her way to you.*
I held it for a long time before I opened it.
Diane sat across from me at the kitchen table and didn't say a word.
She understood, I think, that this part was mine.
I broke the seal.
*Ruth,*
*If you're reading this, then Rose has found you.
I'm glad.
I was afraid she wouldn't, or that you would close the door before she could explain.
The fact that you didn't tells me everything I always knew about you.*
*I don't know how to begin this, so I'll say the hardest thing first.*
*I loved you.
I loved you from the day I met you and I loved you every day of our marriage and I love you now, wherever now is for me.
That is not a thing I say to soften what I did.
It is just true, and you deserve to hear it plainly.*
*What happened with Eleanor was a failure of courage.
I was twenty-eight years old and I was frightened and I made choices that I told myself were practical and that were, in truth, simply cowardly.
I chose not to tell you because I was afraid of losing you.
I chose not to tell you year after year for the same reason.
By the time I understood that the secret itself had become its own kind of betrayal, so many years had passed that I convinced myself the damage of telling you would be greater than the damage of silence.*
*I was wrong.
I knew I was wrong.
I chose silence anyway.*
*Rose is a good person.
She is nothing like what you might fear.
She grew up without me — truly without me, in every way that mattered — and she became someone I am proud of, though I had no right to that pride and I knew it.*
*I am asking you for nothing.
You owe me nothing.
But if you can find it in yourself to let her know you — not for my sake, but for hers, and perhaps for yours — I believe something good could still come from all of this.*
*I am sorry, Ruth.
I am sorry in ways I never found the language for while I was alive.
I hope you can forgive me.
I understand completely if you cannot.*
*All my love, always.*
*Thomas*
I folded the letter and set it on the table.
Diane was watching me.
Her eyes were wet.
"Mom."
"He was a coward," I said.
"He knew it and he said so."
"Yes."
"He also loved me."
"Yes."
I smoothed the edge of the envelope with my thumb.
The paper was thick.
Good quality.
He had chosen it carefully, written it carefully, sealed it carefully, and handed it to a solicitor with instructions to hold it until the right moment.
Even his apology had been managed.
"I'm angry," I said.
"I know."
"I'm going to be angry for a while."
"That's fair."
"And I'm still going to meet her." I looked up at Diane.
"Both things are true at the same time.
I need you to understand that."
Diane reached across the table.
"I do understand."
"He should have told me himself.
While he was alive.
While there was still time to—" I stopped.
There was no point finishing that sentence.
There was no version of it that ended anywhere useful.
"He should have told me."
"He should have," Diane said.
"He was a coward about this one thing.
He was also the man who drove four hours in a snowstorm when I called him crying from university at two in the morning.
He was both."
I looked at her.
"You never told me about that."
"You were asleep.
He didn't want to wake you." A small, sad smile.
"He was always doing things like that.
Quietly.
Without telling anyone."
I thought about the rose bush Eleanor had planted the year Rose was born.
I thought about the roses in my garden, blooming every spring without fail.
I thought about a man who expressed love through tending things carefully and saying very little, and how that same quality had let him keep a secret for thirty-nine years without ever seeming like a man with anything to hide.
"I need some air," I said.
I went out into the garden.
The afternoon light was long and golden across the grass.
I walked to the rose bed and stood in front of it and looked at the blooms — deep red, perfectly shaped, exactly as he'd left them.
My phone buzzed.
Rose again.
*I've been thinking about what you said.
About meeting.
I could come to you, if that's easier.
I don't want to make this harder than it already is.*
I looked at the roses.
*Come Saturday,* I typed.
*I'll make lunch.*
I sent it before I could change my mind.
Walking back toward the house, I noticed something I had somehow missed all week.
On the shelf just inside the back door, where Thomas always left his keys, there was a small framed photograph I didn't recognize.
A woman and a little girl, standing in a garden.
The woman was laughing.
The little girl was holding a flower.
I turned it over.
On the back, in handwriting I now recognized as Eleanor's:
*So you don't forget what you were protecting.*
He had put it there himself.
Facing the wall.
Where only he would ever see it.
I stood there for a long time, holding it.
Then I heard Diane call from the kitchen, and her voice had gone tight in a way that made me move quickly back inside.
She was standing at the table with her phone in her hand, and the color had left her face.
"What?" I said.
"It's the solicitor again." She looked up at me.
"Mom, there's something else.
May you like
Something in the estate documents they missed the first time." She swallowed.
"Rose isn't the only one."
