Chapter 7: What Diane Wrote
Ronnie came downstairs forty minutes later.
She was holding the letter in both hands, open, like she wasn't ready to fold it back up.
She sat across from Claire at the kitchen table.
I stayed where I was, near the counter.
"She knew she might not make it," Ronnie said.
Claire nodded.
"She wrote about you," Ronnie said.
"She said you were the only person she trusted.
She said if anything happened, she knew you'd take care of things." Ronnie looked down at the page.
"She wrote — 'Claire will know what to do.
She always does.
Tell her not to carry it alone.'"
Claire made a sound she couldn't stop.
"She knew you'd carry it alone," Ronnie said.
"She wrote that.
She knew you."
"She knew me better than I knew myself," Claire said.
Ronnie set the letter on the table between them.
"She described me," Ronnie said.
"She wrote what she hoped I'd be like.
She said she hoped I'd have her stubbornness and your patience." A pause.
"She said she hoped I'd find someone who loved me the way Dad loves you."
I had to look away.
"She sounds like someone I would have liked," Ronnie said.
"You would have loved her," Claire said.
"And she would have been completely impossible to deal with and you would have loved her anyway."
Something moved across Ronnie's face.
Not quite a smile.
Something more fragile than that.
"I'm angry," Ronnie said.
"I want you to know that.
I'm not done being angry."
"I know."
"You took something from me.
Both of you — you and Grandma Ruth.
You decided what I was allowed to know about my own life."
"Yes," Claire said.
"We did."
"And I don't know how long it's going to take me to get past that."
"I'm not asking you to hurry."
Ronnie folded the letter carefully.
"But I also know—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I know you drove four hours to be with her.
I know you brought me home.
I know you sat up with me every night I was sick and you came to every single thing I ever did and you never once made me feel like I was anything other than yours."
Claire didn't speak.
"So I'm holding both of those things at the same time," Ronnie said.
"And it's very heavy.
And I need you to understand that."
"I understand," Claire said.
Ronnie looked at me.
"And you.
You kissed her forehead in that hospital room before you knew anything.
Before you had any reason to."
"She was mine," I said.
"I knew it the second I saw her."
Ronnie pressed her lips together hard.
"Okay," she said finally.
It wasn't forgiveness.
It was a door left open instead of locked.
She stood up.
"I'm going back outside.
It's my birthday.
There are people in our backyard who drove here for me." She picked up the letter.
"But tonight, after everyone goes home, I want to sit down with both of you and I want to know everything.
Every detail.
From the beginning."
"We'll tell you everything," I said.
She walked toward the back door.
Stopped with her hand on the frame.
"The woman whose daughter contacted you," she said to Claire.
"Gary Foss's daughter."
"Yes?"
"What's her name?"
"Lena," Claire said.
"Lena Foss."
Ronnie nodded slowly.
May you like
"I want to meet her."
She pushed open the door and walked back into the sunlight.
