Chapter 3: The Letter He Never Sent
The chapel had emptied by then.
Just Daniel and me, standing between the rows of chairs, the flowers already beginning to wilt at the edges.
I unfolded the letter.
Richard's handwriting.
Shaky near the end, the way it had been those last weeks.
But still his.
Still the same hand that had signed our mortgage, written birthday cards, left notes on the fridge that said things like *picked up milk, love you.*
I read the first line.
Then I sat down in the nearest chair because my legs stopped working.
*My darling Joan.
If you are reading this, then Daniel found the courage I never had.
I need to tell you something I should have said thirty-one years ago.*
"Mom." Daniel crouched beside me.
"Do you want me to give you a minute?"
"No." I grabbed his hand.
"Stay."
I kept reading.
*When Daniel was seven, I came home early from work one afternoon.
You were at your sister's.
Daniel didn't hear me come in.
I found him in your bedroom, wearing your blue dress — the one with the white buttons.
He was standing in front of the mirror.
And Joan, the look on his face.
I had never seen him look like that.
Like he had finally found something he'd been searching for.*
My throat ached.
*I didn't say anything.
I backed out of the room.
I told myself it was a phase.
I told myself I hadn't seen it.
And then I spent the next twenty-four years pretending I hadn't.*
"He knew," I whispered.
"He knew when you were seven."
Daniel didn't answer.
His jaw was tight.
"He never said a word to me."
"He was ashamed," Daniel said quietly.
"Not of me.
Of himself.
For how long he stayed silent."
I looked back at the letter.
*When Daniel told me the truth four months ago, my first reaction was the worst thing I have ever done.
I told him to choose.
I told him I couldn't accept it.
I watched my child walk out that door and I let him go.
And then I lay in that hospital bed for two weeks thinking about a seven-year-old boy in a blue dress, smiling at himself in a mirror, and I understood that I had been failing him since that afternoon.*
The paper shook in my hands.
*I called him back.
I asked him to forgive me.
I don't know if I deserved it.
But he came.
He sat beside my bed and held my hand for three days, and we talked more in those three days than we had in the last ten years.
He told me everything.
Who he is.
Who he has always been.
And Joan — he is the bravest person I have ever known.*
I looked at Daniel.
He was staring at the floor.
One tear moved down the side of his face and he didn't wipe it away.
"He said that?" I asked.
"He said a lot of things." Daniel's voice was barely there.
"Near the end, he said things he'd never said before."
I turned back to the letter.
There were two more paragraphs.
But it was the final line that stopped my breath entirely.
*There is one more thing I need you to know, Joan.
Something that has nothing to do with Daniel.
Something I did — or rather, something I failed to stop — that you deserved to know long before now.
I am sorry I waited until I was gone to say it.
I was a coward about this too.
Ask my brother, Gerald.
Ask him what happened in the summer of 1997.
He will know what I mean.
And Joan — whatever he tells you, please know that I chose you.
Every day after that, I chose you.*
I lowered the letter to my lap.
The chapel was completely silent.
"Daniel." My voice didn't sound like mine.
"What happened in 1997?"
He looked up slowly.
"Mom," he said.
May you like
"I don't know."
But something in his eyes told me he was afraid of the answer.
