Chapter 4: September
I took Lily to my brother's house.
Daniel lived twelve minutes from the chapel.
He opened the door still in his wedding guest suit, tie loosened, and took one look at my face before stepping aside without a word.
He made coffee.
He put a glass of juice in front of Lily.
He sat down across from me at the kitchen table and waited.
"Claire has been sick since October," I said.
"She found out in September.
She didn't tell me."
Daniel wrapped both hands around his mug.
"How sick?"
I told him what Claire had said in the corridor.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"And the letter?"
I set it on the table between us.
Lily was on the sofa in the next room, watching something on Daniel's television with the volume low.
She had asked twice if she could stay close.
Both times I had said yes.
"You haven't opened it," Daniel said.
"No."
"Do you want me to leave you alone with it?"
"No."
He nodded once and stayed where he was.
I opened the envelope.
The letter was three pages, written on plain paper in Claire's careful, slightly left-leaning hand.
I had seen that handwriting on grocery lists, on birthday cards, on a note she once left on my pillow that said only *back in an hour, don't worry.*
I read the first paragraph.
*Mark.
If you're reading this, then I wasn't brave enough to say it to your face, and I'm sorry for that.
I've started this letter eleven times.
This is the version I'm least ashamed of.*
I set it down.
"She wrote it in September," I said.
"She's been carrying it for eight months."
Daniel didn't say anything.
I picked it up again and kept reading.
She wrote about the diagnosis.
She wrote about sitting alone in the hospital car park for two hours before she could drive home.
She wrote about watching me and Lily at breakfast the following morning and deciding in that moment that she would not let us watch her disappear.
She wrote: *You lost Lily's mother four years ago.
I have watched you rebuild yourself and rebuild her.
I will not be the second woman who makes Lily learn that word again.*
I stopped at that line for a long time.
Daniel refilled my coffee without asking.
"She thought she was protecting us," I said.
"She was protecting you," Daniel said carefully.
"That's not the same thing as being right."
"No." I folded the second page back.
"It's not."
The third page was shorter.
It was the part she had written most recently — the ink was slightly different, darker, like a different pen.
*I know what I did with Rachel was wrong.
I know you may never understand it.
But I need you to know that every decision I made came from the same place: I could not bear to watch you stay with me out of duty.
I could not bear to see Lily love me more than she already does and then lose me.
I thought if I disappeared cleanly, you would both be angry for a while and then you would be free.*
*I was wrong about what you deserved.
I think I knew that even when I wrote it.*
*Whatever you decide — whether you want to see me or whether you don't — I want you to know that the last two years were the best of my life.
You and Lily were the best of my life.*
*I'm sorry I wasn't braver.
I'm sorry it happened this way.*
*— Claire*
I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.
Lily appeared in the kitchen doorway.
She had taken off her flower-girl shoes and was standing in her white socks.
"Daddy," she said.
"Can we go see Claire?"
I looked at her.
"She's sick," Lily said.
"And she's alone."
Daniel looked at his coffee.
He didn't offer an opinion, which was the most useful thing he could have done.
"How do you know she's alone?" I asked.
Lily thought about it.
"Because she was hiding in a hallway by herself," she said.
"That's what alone looks like."
I sat with that for a moment.
May you like
Then I asked Daniel if Lily could stay with him for a couple of hours.
He said yes before I finished the sentence.
