Chapter 8: The Letter He Wrote Before He D*ed
The officers were there for two hours.
When they left, Vanessa went with them — not under arrest, but asked to come to the station the following morning with her legal representative.
The phrasing was courteous.
The meaning was not optional.
The front door closed.
The house was quiet in a way it hadn't been all evening.
Thomas made tea without being asked.
He brought it to the sitting room on a tray and set it on the low table and then excused himself without a word, which was exactly the right thing to do.
Margaret poured.
Ruth accepted a cup.
Daniel stood near the window with his hands in his pockets.
Emily picked up the envelope from where she had carried it, carefully, through everything that had followed.
Her name.
His handwriting.
The same slant she had always thought was only hers.
She broke the seal.
The letter was three pages, handwritten on heavy cream paper.
The date at the top was fourteen months before Robert Hargrove had d*ed.
She read it in silence.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody moved to look over her shoulder.
When she finished the third page, she held the letter in her lap and looked at the window for a long moment.
"He says he's sorry," she said finally.
"He spends most of the first page saying he's sorry."
"That sounds like him," Margaret said softly.
"When he finally got there."
"He says he found out about me through a private investigator.
He'd hired someone to look into my mother's life — not to find me, he says.
He says he just wanted to know she was alright." Emily paused.
"He found out she had d*ed.
And that she'd left a daughter."
Daniel turned from the window.
"He says he watched from a distance for almost a year before he decided to do anything.
He says he didn't know how to approach me without it seeming like — his word — an intrusion." She looked at the page.
"He was afraid I'd hate him."
"Would you have?" Ruth asked.
Emily thought about it honestly.
"I don't know.
Maybe.
For a while."
"He left you a third," Daniel said.
"Of the estate.
I want you to know I'm not going to contest it."
Emily looked at him.
"You knew what the letter said?"
"Ruth told me its general contents when she arrived tonight.
Before everything happened." He moved away from the window and sat down across from her.
"I should have reached out to you months ago.
I kept telling myself I was waiting for the right moment.
The truth is I was scared.
You were — you are — a disruption to everything I thought I understood about my family." He paused.
"That's not your fault.
It was never your fault."
"No," Emily said.
"It wasn't."
"I'd like to start again," he said.
"If you're willing.
Not as employer and employee.
As — whatever we actually are to each other."
"Half-siblings," Emily said.
He nodded.
"Half-siblings."
Margaret made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost something else entirely.
She pressed two fingers to her mouth.
"Robert would have made a mess of this," she said.
"He always did.
But he would have gotten there eventually." She looked at Emily.
"He got there eventually."
Emily folded the letter carefully along its original creases.
She held it for a moment — this paper that her father had touched, had pressed his pen into, had sealed with his own hands before he d*ed not knowing if she would ever read it.
She put it back in the envelope.
"He says one more thing," she said.
"At the end of the last page."
"What does he say?" Ruth asked.
Emily looked at the envelope in her hands.
"He says: *I don't need you to forgive me.
I only need you to know that you were never nothing to me.
You were always something I was too afraid to deserve.*"
The sitting room was very quiet.
Outside, the last of the evening's cars had gone.
The gate was closed.
The driveway was empty.
Margaret reached across and put her hand over Emily's.
May you like
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
