Chapter 3
“A letter?”
Jenna immediately seemed to regret speaking.
“Ask Sloan.”
“Did she give it to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know more than you’re saying.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s my friend.”
“And Willa is my daughter.”
Jenna looked at me for a long moment.
Then her expression softened, just slightly.
“Then start behaving like her father instead of investigating your ex-wife.”
She left before I could answer.
That afternoon, I went downstairs.
The building’s storage level smelled faintly of concrete and cardboard.
My unit was exactly as Sloan described it.
Archaeological.
Old furniture.
Tax records.
Artwork I had forgotten buying.
Boxes moved from apartment to apartment because throwing things away required attention I never gave them.
Near the back wall, four cartons had my mother’s name on them.
EVELYN GRAY.
Beneath them sat a smaller box.
VINCENT.
I crouched.
For almost twenty-five years, I had avoided most of what belonged to my mother.
Not because I didn’t love her.
Because I did.
Too much.
After she died, my father removed photographs from the common rooms within a month.
When I asked why, he said, “We have to continue.”
So we continued.
That was what Gray men did.
I opened the box.
Inside were school certificates, photographs, a wooden sailboat I had made when I was eight, and several birthday cards tied together with ribbon.
At the bottom lay an old cassette recorder.
I smiled despite myself.
My mother used to record messages when she traveled.
Beside it sat an envelope addressed in her handwriting.
For Vincent, when he is old enough to mistake being strong for being alone.
I stared at it.
My mother had been dead twenty-five years, yet she had somehow managed to criticize me perfectly.
I carried the entire box upstairs.
Sloan was feeding Willa when I returned.
She saw the carton.
“You found it.”
“Apparently my mother predicted my personality decades in advance.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“You have no idea.”
I showed her the envelope.
She read the line and smiled.
“I like her already.”
“You met her.”
“Only through photographs.”
I forgot sometimes.
My mother had been gone long before Sloan entered my life.
I sat at the dining table and opened the envelope.
The letter inside was six pages.
Not dramatic.
Not mysterious.
My mother wrote about ordinary things.
How quickly I ran everywhere as a child.
How stubbornly I refused help tying my shoes.
How, when I was seven, I announced that crying was useless because it didn’t fix problems.
She wrote that my father loved me fiercely but had been raised to believe affection made people dependent.
She wrote that she worried I was learning the same lesson.
One passage stopped me.
Your father thinks providing for a family is the same as being present for one. I hope someday you understand the difference before someone you love has to teach it to you by leaving.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
Sloan said nothing.
I folded the letter.
“He knew about this?”
“I don’t know.”
“My father packed these boxes.”
“Maybe he couldn’t read it.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“I mean emotionally.”
I looked at her.
Sloan shrugged.
“People avoid things for complicated reasons.”
I almost laughed.
“Is that experience speaking?”
“Possibly.”
I wanted to ask about the pregnancy.
Instead, I said, “Did you try to tell me in December?”
Her face went still.
Jenna.
She didn’t have to ask.
“She talks when she’s angry,” Sloan said.
“She told me you wrote something.”
Sloan looked toward the windows.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
“I did.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you give it to me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She adjusted Willa’s blanket even though it didn’t need adjusting.
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“The night of the Mercer dinner.”
I remembered the Mercer dinner.
Black tie.
December twelfth.
I had gone without Sloan.
I had told everyone she had a migraine.
The truth was we had argued.
“You said you weren’t coming.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You said you were sick.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
She looked at me.
“Because I had spent three hours cooking dinner.”
My memory rearranged itself.
There had been food on the table when I came home to change.
Candles.
Flowers.
I barely looked.
“I thought it was just dinner.”
“It was.”
Her smile was sad.
“And it wasn’t.”
“You were going to tell me.”
She nodded.
“I had the ultrasound picture.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“You had an ultrasound?”
“Eleven weeks.”
“Sloan…”
“I put it in an envelope with a letter because I knew if I tried to say it aloud, I would lose my nerve.”
“What happened?”
“You came home late.”
“I remember.”
“You took a phone call while changing your shirt.”
I remembered that too.
“You told me Mercer had moved the dinner forward. I asked you not to go.”
“And I went.”
“You said it mattered.”
I closed my eyes.
It had mattered.
At the time.
That was the problem.
Everything always mattered at the time.
“What did I say?” I asked.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
She took a breath.
“You said, ‘I can’t keep proving I love you by disappointing everyone else.’”
Shame moved through me.
“That sounds like me.”
“It was.”
“And the envelope?”
“I had put it in your briefcase.”
I looked at her sharply.
“You what?”
“Before you came home. I thought you’d find it later.”
“Then I should have seen it.”
“I took it back.”
“Why?”
“Because after you left, I sat there for an hour imagining you opening it in the back of a car between emails.”
Her eyes filled, but her voice remained steady.
“I couldn’t let the first moment you knew about our child happen like that.”
I had no defense.
None.
“So you waited.”
“I tried again at Christmas.”
I remembered her question about children.
My stomach dropped.
“And I said not now.”
“You said, ‘I can barely manage a marriage. A baby would finish me.’”
I looked away.
May you like
I remembered saying it now.
Not as a declaration.
