Chapter 8: Everything Carol Kept
Carol Simms was seventy-one years old and walked with a cane she didn't seem to need — she carried it more than she leaned on it, swinging it slightly as she crossed the coffee shop toward my table like a woman who had decided at some point that the cane was useful for other purposes.
She sat down across from me and put a manila envelope on the table between us.
"I've been carrying this for four years," she said.
"Metaphorically.
The actual envelope is newer."
"What's in it?"
"The receipt.
A photograph — security camera, not great quality but clear enough.
Garrett Finch entering Victoria's building the week before your mother left the city." She paused.
"And a copy of the original letter.
The real one.
The one William actually wrote."
I stared at her.
"He did write a letter," Carol said.
"Just not that one.
He wrote her a letter asking her to come back.
Victoria intercepted it.
I found it in a drawer in the office on Archer Street — I was doing admin work there that summer, for both of them, which is how I ended up knowing things I shouldn't have.
I made a copy before Victoria found out I'd seen it.
Then I kept very quiet for a very long time."
"Why didn't you go to William?"
She looked at her hands.
"Because I was twenty-six years old and Victoria Ashworth was the kind of woman who could end a career with a phone call, and I had a daughter of my own and a rent payment and I told myself it wasn't my business." She looked up.
"I was wrong.
I knew I was wrong.
I just kept being wrong for a very long time because it was easier."
"And then you got sick."
"And then I got sick," she agreed.
"And I thought about your mother.
And I thought about you — I didn't know you, but I knew you existed, and I thought about what it would mean to d*e having kept this." She touched the envelope.
"I couldn't do it."
I pulled the envelope toward me and opened it.
The receipt was there.
Garrett Finch, document services, a line item that read *correspondence replication and modification* with a date that matched the week my mother had left the city.
Victoria Ashworth's personal account number at the bottom.
The photograph was grainy but legible.
A man in a dark coat entering a building.
A timestamp.
And underneath both of those, a single folded page.
I unfolded it.
William's handwriting — I didn't know his handwriting, but somehow I knew it immediately, the same way I'd known his voice.
Careful and slightly cramped and absolutely certain of itself.
*Diane.
I know you're frightened.
I know the last few weeks have been harder than either of us expected.
But I need you to know that Eleanor changes nothing about how I feel — she changes everything about what I want.
Please come home.
Both of you.
I'll be here.*
I set the letter down on the table.
Carol was watching me.
"He wanted us," I said.
"Yes," she said.
"He wanted you very much."
I called William from the parking lot.
He answered on the first ring.
"Can you come to the city?" I said.
"There's someone you need to meet.
And there's something you need to read."
A pause.
"I'm already in the city.
I didn't go home last night." Another pause, quieter.
"I couldn't."
"Where are you?"
He named a street four blocks away.
"Stay there," I said.
"I'm coming to you."
I walked the four blocks with Carol's envelope under my arm and the cold morning air on my face and something that had been clenched tight in my chest for as long as I could remember beginning, very slowly, to loosen.
I turned the corner and saw him standing on the pavement outside a small hotel, his hands in his coat pockets, looking up at nothing in particular.
He saw me and straightened.
I held up the envelope.
His eyes dropped to it.
Then back to my face.
"What is that?" he said.
"The real letter," I said.
"The one you wrote her."
He went very still.
"She never got it," I said.
"But I have it now."
He reached out and took the envelope with both hands, the same careful way he'd picked up the broken pendant the night before.
Like something that had been lost a long time and needed to be held correctly.
We stood on the pavement in the cold morning and he read it.
When he finished, he folded it back along its original creases and held it against his chest for a moment.
Then he looked at me.
May you like
"What do we do now?" he said.
"Now," I said, "we make sure Victoria answers for it."
