“What do you mean?”
“I brought the letters to your house.”
“When?”
“Two weeks after Ethan died.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“I left them with your neighbor.”
“My neighbor?”
“Mrs. Bell.”
My heart stopped.
Mrs. Bell had lived next door for years.
“She never gave me anything.”
Daniel reached into his coat.
“I thought she had.”
He pulled out an old receipt.
“Then, years later, I found out she had moved away. Her daughter was clearing out her house and contacted me.”
I stared at the receipt.
There was a date.
Three weeks after Ethan’s funeral.
Then Daniel said something that made the room go cold.
“She also
gave me something else.”
“What?”
“A note.”
He unfolded a piece of paper.
The handwriting wasn’t Ethan’s.
It belonged to someone else.
The message was short.
Don’t give Margaret the letters. Ethan’s death wasn’t as simple as she thinks.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve had this for thirteen years?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was scared.”
“Of what?”
Daniel looked toward Clara.
“Of finding out what actually happened to Ethan.”
Silence filled the room.
Clara slowly stood.
“You said the surgery went wrong.”
“It did.”
“But you think something else happened?”
Daniel nodded.
“I think Ethan may have known something before he went into that operating room.”
My heart began pounding.
“What could he have known?”
Daniel looked at the box.
“There is one more letter.”
He reached beneath the others and pulled out a sealed envelope.
It was different
from the rest.
The paper was newer.
The handwriting was Ethan’s.
But there was no date.
And on the front were six words:
Mom, please read this last.
I couldn’t breathe.
Daniel handed it to me.
I held it in both hands.
For thirteen years, I had believed the hardest thing I would ever have to do was bury my son.
I was wrong.
The hardest thing was realizing that perhaps I had never been told the whole truth about how I lost him.
I looked at Clara.
She was crying silently.
Then she looked at me.
