“No.”
“You should have contacted me.”
“Yes.”
“You used Lily because you were afraid I’d refuse you directly.”
Sophie lowered her eyes.
“Yes.”
At least she was honest.
“Do not do it again.”
“I won’t.”
I looked at the copies of the letters.
Then asked:
“Where is Mara?”
Sophie gave me an address.
I did not go there.
Not yet.
I went to Willowcrest Nursing Residence.
Dad was playing cards with another resident when I arrived.
He smiled.
“There’s my girl.”
I almost turned around.
Girl.
At sixty-six, I was still his girl when it suited him.
I waited until his friend left.
Then placed one photocopied envelope on the table.
Dad’s face changed immediately.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
I knew before he spoke.
“You saw these.”
He stared.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mara.”
His fingers trembled.
“She’s alive?”
The question sounded genuine.
That complicated my anger.
“You knew she was alive in 1996.”
Dad closed his eyes.
I felt something inside me break.
“You saw her.”
“Yes.”
One word.
Forty years rearranged by one word.
“How many letters did you intercept?”
He looked toward the window.
“Dad.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Several.”
“Twenty-three?”
His face collapsed.
“Not all.”
“Wonderful.”
I leaned closer.
“How many did you give Mom?”
None.
He didn’t say it.
He didn’t need to.
“How many did you give me?”
Silence.
“None.”
“I thought—”
“No.”
He stopped.
“You do not get to start with what you thought.”
My voice shook.
“You tell me what you did.”
Dad looked suddenly old.
Not harmless.
Just old.
“The first letter came months after she left.”
“Your mother was barely functioning.”
“She had stopped eating.”
“She woke every night.”
“You were angry.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You said terrible things about Mara.”
“I was sixteen.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
“Did you?”
“I thought if I gave your mother that letter, Mara would pull all of us back into chaos.”
“So you hid it.”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
Dad’s eyes filled.
“She was sorry.”
My throat tightened.
“She asked if she could come home.”
I stared at him.
My sister had asked to come home.
At sixteen.
And Dad had decided the answer for all of us.
“What did you do?”
“I wrote back.”
I went cold.
“As who?”
“Myself.”
“What did you say?”
“That she had made her choice.”
I stood.
Dad began crying.
I did not care yet.
“Then she wrote to me.”
“Yes.”
“And you returned them.”
“Some.”
“Writing that I had moved.”
