Chapter 7 - What Rhonda Wrote in the Last Letter
The envelope was old, the paper inside gone soft at every fold. Rhonda had written it six years back — seven years before she died, three years before the diagnosis.
The handwriting was different from the earlier letters. Slower. More deliberate. The writing of someone who'd made up her mind about something and wanted to get it exactly right.
I read it standing at the counter with Dale on the other side, watching me.
Dale, I'm writing this because I've been thinking about all the years, and I don't want to carry this into old age without saying it. I'm not asking you to write back. I'm not asking for a single thing. But there's one thing you need to know, because it's about your son.
I looked up. Dale nodded once, very slightly. Keep reading.
When Cole was fourteen, he came to Reno. I don't think you knew. I'm sure you didn't. He'd found Kayla somehow — kids find things, they always do — and they'd been talking online for almost a year before he got on a bus by himself and came out to meet her. He told me at first that he was just a friend from school. But Kayla told me the truth later, and I recognized his last name, and I knew.
My hands weren't quite steady.
He stayed a weekend. He slept on our couch. He and Kayla walked all over the neighborhood and talked for hours. I made them dinner both nights. He was the most polite, most gentle fourteen-year-old I have ever met. He was also plainly miserable at home, though he never once said so out loud. He didn't have to. I've seen that exact kind of quiet in a kid before — the kind that comes from being told, over and over, that who you are is wrong.
I want you to know your son is remarkable. Whatever you've said to him or about him, he is remarkable. He found his sister on his own. He rode a bus alone to a strange city at fourteen because he needed to know he wasn't the only one. And he was kind to her, Dale. He was so kind to her. I thought you should know that, even if you never tell him I said it.
I put the letter down.
"He knew," I said. "Cole knew about Kayla when he was fourteen."
"Yes."
"And he never told us. Either of us."
"No."
I thought about my son at fourteen. The year the silences at dinner stretched longer and longer. The year he stopped asking Dale to come watch him practice. The year his bedroom door started staying shut. I'd told myself it was just being a teenager. I'd told myself it was normal.
"He went and found her," I said, "because he needed somebody. And he couldn't get that in this house."
Dale put both palms flat on the counter and stared down at them.
"I know," he said.
"He was fourteen years old, and he got on a bus alone, because this family wasn't enough for him." My voice stayed level, which surprised me. "Because you weren't enough for him. And he found a sister he wasn't supposed to know existed, and he kept her secret for four years. To protect her. Or to protect me. Or both."
"Nadine—"
"Don't." I held up a hand. "I need a minute."
I walked to the window. The street outside was dark and empty, one neighbor's porch light burning. I stood there and thought about Cole at fourteen, asleep on a stranger's couch in Reno, eating dinner at Rhonda's table, walking a neighborhood he'd never seen next to a girl he'd found entirely on his own — feeling, maybe for the first time in years, like he wasn't the wrong shape for the world.
I turned back around.
"We have to tell him we know," I said. "Tonight. Before Kayla comes back tomorrow."
"He'll think I'm angry—"
"He'll think whatever he thinks. He deserves to know we've read it. He deserves to stop carrying it by himself."
May you like
Dale straightened up. "You're right."
"I know I am." I picked the letter back up. "Go wake him."
