Chapter 7: The Letters She Kept
We sat in the car outside Richard's building for twenty minutes without starting the engine.
Alex had the phone in his hand.
He read the message twice more, then set it face-down on the console between us.
"Tell me about the letters," I said.
He looked out through the windshield.
A courier crossed the street in front of us, weaving between taxis.
Neither of us watched him.
"I was twenty-six," Alex said.
"My father had just died.
I was in a bad place for about a year — drinking too much, making decisions I wouldn't make now.
I wrote my mother a series of letters.
Long ones.
I was angry and I was grieving and I said things that were—" He stopped.
"I said things about my father.
About what he'd done to her.
About what I thought she deserved after everything she'd sacrificed."
"Things that could be taken out of context."
"Things that were already out of context when I wrote them.
I was twenty-six and I thought I understood something I didn't." He finally looked at me.
"If she releases them selectively — certain paragraphs, certain lines — it looks like I've always believed she was a victim.
That this is new.
That I turned on her suddenly, because of you."
"She'd use your grief against you."
"She'd use my grief against both of us." He picked up the phone again.
"She's been holding them for sixteen years.
She kept them for exactly this."
I thought about the checkbook.
The call to Richard.
The message sent through a neighbor so there was no direct record from her number.
"She planned this," I said.
"Not last night.
Not this week.
She's had this ready."
"She has contingencies for everything." He said it without bitterness, which was almost worse.
"She always has."
"Okay," I said.
He looked at me.
"We don't run from it," I said.
"If she releases the letters, we get ahead of them.
You write a statement.
You explain the context.
You were twenty-six, you were grieving, you were wrong about some things and right about others.
You don't hide it."
"It could still damage—"
"It damages less than letting her control the story." I turned in my seat to face him fully.
"She is counting on you being afraid of those letters.
The moment you stop being afraid of them, they lose half their power."
He was quiet for a long time.
"There's something else," he said.
I waited.
"One of the letters mentions you.
Not by name — we hadn't met yet.
But I wrote something about the kind of woman I hoped to find.
Someone who would help me get distance from my mother." He paused.
"She'll say I was looking for a weapon.
That I chose you strategically."
"She'll say that regardless," I said.
"With or without the letters."
"Olivia—"
"Alex." I put my hand over his on the console.
My bandaged palm against his knuckles.
"She burned my hands.
She burned Chloe's hands.
She opened a checkbook and she threatened the press and she sent a message through a neighbor so her fingerprints weren't on it.
That is who she is." I waited until he looked at me.
"The letters are old.
The footage is six weeks ago.
Dr.
Hale's file goes back to September.
That's the story."
He turned his hand over and held mine carefully, avoiding the bandage.
"I'll call our attorney," he said.
"Good."
"And I'll call Richard again.
Before she does."
"Better."
He started the engine.
We pulled out into traffic.
His phone buzzed again.
This time it was a number he didn't recognize.
He let it ring.
It rang three more times on the drive home.
When we got back, I checked the front step out of habit — the way I'd learned to check it over three months of small humiliations, packages moved, deliveries signed for and not mentioned, small signs that the house had been managed in my absence.
There was an envelope on the step.
No stamp.
No return address.
Just my name, in handwriting I didn't recognize.
I picked it up.
Opened it.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Evelyn at a restaurant table.
Across from her was a man I didn't know.
Between them on the table was a folder, open, with papers inside.
May you like
On the back of the photograph, someone had written four words in pencil.
*She's done this before.*
