“Did she say anything else?”
Mom nodded.
“She told Thomas that if she couldn’t watch you grow up, he had to make sure you always knew you were wanted.”
I looked toward the door.
“Then why did he wait twenty-four years?”
Mom had no answer.
The following morning, I found Thomas sitting alone at the kitchen table.
He looked as though he had not slept.
I sat opposite him, leaving an empty chair between us.
“I read her letter,” I said.
He nodded.
“She was a wonderful woman.”
“Tell me about her.”
For the first time since the revelation, he began to smile.
He told me how Margaret used to sing loudly while washing dishes, how she collected postcards from places she had never visited, and how she could never pass a stray animal without stopping to feed it.
He told me she had wanted to become a nurse.
He told me she had been terrified of thunderstorms but always pretended otherwise.
