Chapter 5: The Second Letter
Mom took the envelope.
She held it for a moment, turning it over once, then held it out to me.
"Together," she said.
I broke the seal.
There were two pages this time, covered front and back in Dad's careful handwriting — closer together than the first letter, as if he'd had more to say and less space to say it in.
Mom leaned in.
We read it side by side.
*To my two favorite women in the world —*
*If Arthur is sitting with you, then everything went the way I hoped.
I know that's a lot to ask of a man I spent thirty years not speaking to.
But he came.
I knew he would.
Whatever else went wrong between us, Arthur always kept his word.*
*I want to explain why I kept this from you both for so long.
Not to excuse it.
Just to explain.*
*When Arthur and I stopped speaking, I told myself it was his fault.
For years, that was enough.
Then one day Claire, you were about sixteen, and you came home upset because you'd had a fight with your best friend — I don't even remember what it was about — and you said, "I don't care if I never speak to her again." And I watched you say it, and I thought: that's exactly what I said.
And I've been saying it for twelve years.*
*That was the day I understood I was wrong.*
*But I was a proud man.
That is my greatest flaw and I have known it my whole life.
I waited another twenty years before I wrote back to Arthur.
Twenty years.
By the time I did, it felt too late to also tell you.
I didn't want you to think less of me.*
*I am telling you now because I don't want either of you to carry silence the way I did.
It is a very heavy thing to carry.
It gets heavier every year.*
*Arthur has something that belongs to our family.
Something our father left behind that was meant for both of us, and that I refused to accept at the time out of stubbornness.
I am asking him to give it to you now.
Not as an inheritance.
As a beginning.*
*Take care of each other.
Take care of Arthur — he is older than he looks and worse at asking for help than I ever was, which is saying something.*
*All my love, always —*
*Your Dad.
Your husband.*
I finished reading before Mom did.
I sat quietly and waited.
When she reached the last line, she made a sound I had never heard from her before — not quite a sob, not quite a laugh.
Something in between.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth.
Arthur was watching us both.
"He was a good writer," he said, after a moment.
"He always was.
Better than me."
"What does he mean?" I asked.
"Something that belongs to the family."
Arthur reached back into his jacket.
This time he produced a small photograph, old and slightly faded, in a thin cardboard frame.
He held it out.
It was a picture of two boys — maybe eight and ten years old — standing in front of a farmhouse.
The younger one was squinting into the sun.
The older one had his arm around his brother's shoulder.
Even at eight years old, I recognized my father's face.
"That's the house," Arthur said.
"Our family home.
It's been in a trust since our father passed.
I've been the sole trustee because your father refused to be named.
It's a small property — nothing grand.
But it's still there.
Still standing." He paused.
"Your father's name is still on the deed.
Which means it passes to you."
I stared at the photograph.
"He never wanted it," Arthur said.
"He told me in his last letter that he'd been wrong about that too.
He said the house wasn't the problem.
We were the problem.
And he hoped you might want to see it someday."
Mom put her arm around me.
I didn't say anything.
I just looked at those two boys in the photograph — one with his arm around the other, both of them squinting into a sun that had set decades ago.
May you like
Somewhere in that picture was the man who had raised me.
And next to him, the man now sitting three feet away, turning a flat cap in his hands, waiting to see what I would do.
