Chapter 8 - My Father's Words
The paper was thin — that lightweight pale-blue stationery he'd kept in the left drawer of his desk for as long as I'd been alive, the kind he saved for letters he considered important.
His handwriting landed somewhere behind my ribs. Neat. Unhurried. A little old-fashioned.
I read it slow.
My dear girl,
If you're reading this, then it's been a while since I've been gone, and Nora has decided you're ready. She has better judgment about these things than I ever did. She always has.
I want to tell you about Marcus. Not to make you angry — you'll find enough reasons for that on your own — but because you deserve the truth from me, in my words, instead of piecing it together from what other people tell you.
I gave him money. You probably know that by now. What you may not know is that somewhere under all the hope, I knew I was being used. A father doesn't want to believe that about his son. So I believed what I wanted to, and I paid for it, and I am sorrier than I can say that Nora ended up paying part of that bill next to me.
Here's what I need you to understand. Marcus isn't a mystery. He isn't complicated. He finds people who love someone, and he uses that love as a lever. He used mine for him. He'll try to use yours for Nora. Don't let him.
You are the best thing that came out of my life. Not because you're mine by blood — you're not, and that has never mattered for one single day — but because of who you decided to be when life handed you every excuse to be someone smaller. Your mother would be proud of you. I am proud of you.
Look after Nora. She won't ask you to. That's exactly why you have to.
All my love,
Dad
I sat with it in my hands for a long time.
She didn't speak. She just sat across from me with her hands in her lap and let me have the room.
When I finally looked up, my face was wet. I didn't bother hiding it.
"He knew," I said. "He knew Marcus would come back."
"He suspected. He wrote that after Marcus made contact the first time — before we'd worked out the arrangement. He wanted to be sure that if anything happened to him, you wouldn't get blindsided."
"Why didn't you give it to me sooner?"
She looked at me steadily. "Because sooner, you'd have gone after Marcus yourself. You'd have confronted him before you understood what you were up against." A pause. "Your father knew that too. That's why he left the timing to me."
I folded the letter carefully and held it a moment. Then I put it in my bag, close to me, where it was going to stay.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?"
"I'm not going to fall apart." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. "I'm going to do what he asked."
She nodded once, slow. "I know. I've known for a while that you would."
I reached across the table and took her hand. She let me. Her fingers were cool and dry and familiar — the hand that smoothed my hair when I was sick, that passed me a tissue at my father's graveside, that had held thirty envelopes addressed to a man she couldn't stand because she believed it was the only way to keep me safe.
"No more payments," I said. "No more silence. We do this together."
"And Marcus?"
"I start making calls in the morning." I squeezed her hand. "Starting with Sharon."
She looked at me a long moment. Something in her face — some tension that had been sitting there so long it had started to pass for a feature — quietly let go.
"Your father was right," she said softly. "About all of it."
May you like
Outside, the courtyard was dark. The empty bird feeder swung a little in the wind. Down the hall, a night nurse made her rounds, footsteps soft and even as a clock.
I didn't leave until she was asleep.
