“She said she’d written it years ago but never had the courage to send it.”
“Then why give it to you?”
Grace wiped her cheek.
“She wanted us to know what really happened.”
Emma looked down.
“But she made us promise we’d never give the letter to you.”
“She wanted us to know what really happened.”
I stared at all three of them.
“Why?”
Sophie’s voice broke.
“Because she said if you knew the truth, you might look at us differently. Maybe you wouldn’t want us anymore.”
I almost laughed.
“What truth could possibly do that?”
Nobody answered.
Emma pushed the envelope toward me.
“Because she said if you knew the truth, you might look at us differently.”
My mother’s handwriting was on the front.
Older.
Shakier.
But unmistakable.
I opened it.
The paper inside smelled faintly stale, like it had spent years waiting in a drawer.
The first line hit like a slap.
“My dear son, I left because I learned what none of you were ever supposed to know…”
The first line hit like a slap.
I stopped.
Grace covered her mouth.
I kept reading.
Mom wrote that she’d waited until the girls were adults because she couldn’t carry the truth to her grave, but still couldn’t bring herself to tell me herself.
She wrote about Dad.
About the weeks before his death.
