Chapter 4: Ten Minutes Down the Road
I knocked on Eliza's door at half past nine.
She answered in her dressing gown, coffee in hand, and for just a moment her face was open and unguarded.
Then she saw my expression and something shifted behind her eyes.
"Can I come in?" I said.
She stepped back without a word.
Her living room was tidy.
A candle on the windowsill.
A book face-down on the armchair.
It looked like the home of someone who had been quietly rebuilding her life, and some part of me had believed that story completely until last night.
I sat on the sofa.
She stayed standing.
"Andrew told me about the letters," I said.
She didn't flinch.
That was the first thing that surprised me.
I had expected tears, or panic, or an immediate rush of apology.
Instead she set her coffee down on the side table and looked at me with something that was almost steady.
"How many did you read?" she asked.
"All six."
A pause.
"Then you know I never asked him for anything."
"You told my husband you think about him more than you should.
You told him I don't see him the way you do.
You kept the most important letter I ever wrote and used it to understand exactly how to—" I stopped.
"What would you call that, Eliza?"
"Stupid," she said quietly.
"I'd call it stupid and wrong and something I'm ashamed of."
"That's not enough."
"I know."
"You sat in my kitchen every single day.
I made you tea.
I listened to you cry about your divorce.
I told Andrew to be patient with you because you were going through something hard.
And the whole time—"
"It wasn't the whole time." Her voice cracked slightly.
"It wasn't like that from the beginning.
I genuinely needed you.
After Marcus left, I was — I was in pieces.
And then I was here, and I was watching the two of you, and I started to feel something I shouldn't have.
I tried to make it a joke so it wouldn't feel so real."
"The backup option."
"Yes."
"You thought if you laughed about it, it didn't count."
She sat down then, slowly, in the armchair across from me.
"I thought if I said it out loud like it was nothing, I could make it nothing."
"But you were still writing him letters."
She pressed her hands together in her lap.
"Yes."
I looked at her — really looked at her.
She was my sister.
I had known her face my entire life.
And sitting across from me now she looked smaller than I had ever seen her.
Not performing grief the way she sometimes did.
Just small, and tired, and caught.
"Did you ever intend to send them?" I asked.
"No.
I told myself they were just — a way of getting it out.
Like a journal."
"But you addressed them to him."
She didn't answer that.
"Eliza." My voice was quieter now, which somehow made it worse.
"Did you want my marriage to fail?"
The silence stretched long enough that it became its own answer.
"I don't know," she finally said.
"I don't think I wanted it to fail.
I think I wanted — I wanted to be you.
I wanted what you have.
And I couldn't separate those two things cleanly enough."
I stood up.
My coat was still on.
I hadn't taken it off when I came in, and I realized now that I had never intended to stay long.
"I need some time," I said.
"I don't know how much."
"I understand."
"I'm not saying this is over between us.
I'm saying I can't sit across from you right now and pretend I know who you are."
She nodded.
Her eyes were wet but she didn't let them spill.
I walked to the door.
My hand was on the handle when she spoke.
"The letter," she said.
"The one Andrew gave back to you.
I read it once.
Years ago, before you were even married.
I found it in the box you gave me and I — I shouldn't have.
But I did.
And after I read it, I understood exactly how much you loved him." She paused.
"I think that's when it started."
I opened the door and walked out into the cold morning air.
I didn't look back.
But behind me, I heard her say one more thing — so quietly I almost missed it.
May you like
"I'm sorry, Clara."
It was the first time she had used my name all morning.
