Chapter 8: What He Left Behind
Gerald placed two envelopes on the desk.
Both were sealed.
Both were in Andrew's handwriting.
Evelyn's name on one.
Brianna's on the other.
"I'll leave you alone," Gerald said.
He rose, took his reading glasses, and closed the office door quietly behind him.
Evelyn looked at the envelope with her name on it for a long time.
Marcus touched her arm once, gently, then moved to the window and looked out.
She opened it.
---
*Evelyn.*
*If you're reading this, Gerald has decided the time is right.
Which means something has gone wrong, and I'm sorry for that.
I'm sorry I couldn't stay long enough to stop it myself.*
*The trust is my best attempt at a wall.
Raymond Cole is persistent and he is patient, and I know he will look for a way through me to reach you.
I couldn't let him do that.
I hope the wall holds.*
*I want you to know something I didn't say often enough when I was there to say it.
You were not a chapter in my life.
You were the whole book.
Everything good I managed to do — the work, the house, the raising of that impossible and wonderful girl — was built around you.
Whatever comes next for you, I want it to be yours completely.
Don't let anyone reduce your life to an estate figure.*
*Tell Brianna I'm sorry I left things complicated.
And tell her I was proud of her every single day, including the ones she made difficult.*
*All my love, always.*
*Andrew*
---
Evelyn folded the letter.
Set it on her knee.
Looked at the ceiling.
Breathed out very slowly.
Marcus turned from the window.
He saw her face and didn't say anything.
"I'm alright," she said.
Though her voice wasn't quite steady.
"I know you are," he said.
She sat for another minute.
Then she picked up Brianna's envelope, stood, and put it in her bag.
She found Brianna where she expected to — at the family house, alone, David's car gone from the driveway, the kitchen exactly as they had left it.
Brianna was sitting at the table with a cup of tea she wasn't drinking.
She looked up when Evelyn walked in.
Her eyes were red.
She looked very young, in the way that people look young when the thing they believed in has collapsed underneath them.
"He's gone," Brianna said.
"He took his things this morning."
Evelyn sat down across from her.
"I owe you an apology," Brianna said.
Her voice cracked once on the last word and she steadied it.
"I believed him.
I believed him over you.
Over Gerald.
Over everything Dad built." She looked down at the table.
"He cried, Mom.
When he told me about Raymond and Dad.
He actually cried.
And I thought — I thought that meant it was real."
"Brianna."
"I threw you out of the venue.
In front of everyone.
I told you to leave." She pressed her hands flat to the table.
"I don't know how you're sitting here right now."
"Because you're my daughter."
Brianna looked up.
Evelyn reached into her bag and placed the envelope on the table.
"This is from your father.
Gerald has been holding it since before he d\*ed.
It was sealed until the trust was either challenged or enforced." She paused.
"It's yours.
I haven't read it."
Brianna looked at the envelope.
Andrew's handwriting.
Her name in his hand.
Her breath caught — the hard, involuntary sound of someone trying not to fall apart.
She picked it up.
She didn't open it right away.
She just held it.
"Did he know?" she asked.
"Did he know this might happen?"
"He knew Raymond Cole was a threat.
He didn't know how it would come.
He didn't know it would come through someone you loved."
Brianna closed her eyes.
When she opened them they were wet.
"I'm so sorry, Mom."
"I know."
"That's not enough."
"No," Evelyn said honestly.
"It's not.
But it's where we start."
Brianna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
She looked at the envelope again.
"Will you stay while I read it?"
Evelyn looked at her daughter.
The impossible and wonderful girl Andrew had written about.
May you like
"Yes," she said.
"I'll stay."
