Chapter 7: Say It Out Loud
Carol looked at Danny for a long time without speaking.
The fish tank down the hall made a faint humming sound.
Somewhere further away, a television was on.
The world outside this room was carrying on as if nothing was happening.
"I'm sorry, Daniel," Carol said.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Danny didn't move from the doorway.
"Tell me what you're sorry for," he said.
"Specifically."
She looked down.
"Say it," I said.
"You owe him that much."
Carol's hands pressed flat against her thighs.
When she spoke, it came out slowly, like something being pulled from a long way down.
"I took the letters.
Both ways.
I told Ruth you'd probably found someone overseas.
I told you Ruth had married and moved away.
And when you came looking after the war — I wrote to you and told you she had children.
That she was happy.
That you should leave her alone."
Danny nodded once.
"And my letters to Ruth.
The ones I sent after the war."
Carol closed her eyes.
"I intercepted those too.
I told the post office I was collecting her mail while she was visiting family.
She wasn't.
She was home."
"I was home," I said.
"I was twenty-three years old and I was home."
Carol opened her eyes.
They were wet now, but her voice stayed controlled.
She had always been controlled.
"I know what I did," she said.
"I have known every single day."
"And yet," Danny said.
She looked at him.
"And yet you let it stand," he said.
"Every day for fifty-five years.
Every Christmas you spent at Ruth's house.
Every time she told you she couldn't imagine loving anyone else.
Every time she said she still thought about me." His voice didn't rise.
It stayed level and quiet, which was somehow worse.
"You let it stand."
"What was I supposed to do?" Carol's voice cracked for the first time.
"Come to you after ten years and say — what?
After twenty years?
After forty?
The longer it went, the more impossible it became.
I couldn't — there was no way to — " She stopped.
Pressed her fingers to her mouth.
"There was always a way," I said.
"You just didn't want to pay the price."
Carol looked at me then, and for a moment I saw my sister — the girl who had braided my hair before school, who had held my hand at our father's funeral, who had sent me birthday cards every year without fail.
That person was still in there somewhere.
She had just built something monstrous around herself and called it a life.
"What happens now?" Carol asked.
Her voice was small.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
"Are you going to tell Michael?
The grandchildren?"
"I haven't decided."
She nodded.
Her hands were still in her lap.
The shaking had stopped.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me," she said.
"I know what I took from you.
From both of you." She looked at Danny.
"I know there's no word for it."
"No," Danny said.
"There isn't."
He picked up the magazine from the floor.
He set it on the side table next to her tea, carefully, without a word.
Then he walked to the door.
"Ruth," he said.
"Whenever you're ready."
I stood up.
I looked at my sister one more time.
"I'll call you," I said.
"When I know what I want to say."
She nodded.
She didn't ask me to stay.
I walked out of the room and into the hallway, and Danny fell into step beside me, and we walked past the fish tank and the noticeboard and Linda at the nurses' station, and neither of us said anything until we were outside in the cold morning air.
Then Danny stopped walking.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
I thought about it honestly.
"No," I said.
"But I think I will be."
He nodded.
We stood there for a moment in the parking lot, two old people with gray hair and a fifty-five-year gap between them and no idea what came next.
Then Danny said: "Are you hungry?
I haven't eaten since yesterday."
I looked at him.
"There's a diner," I said.
"About six blocks from here."
Something moved across his face.
Not quite a smile.
May you like
Something quieter and deeper than that.
"Lead the way," he said.
