“I kept thinking eventually you would be ready.”
I laughed softly.
“Apparently none of us was ever ready.”
I opened the box.
One of Rosie’s newborn hats sat near the top.
I touched it.
It was impossibly small.
My hands began shaking.
“I thought if I saw any of this again, I would fall apart.”
“I know.”
“That’s what you were doing in the garage every birthday?”
David nodded.
“I wrote Hannah another letter.”
“What did you write?”
“Everything I wished we were brave enough to tell her.”
I looked at him.
“You should have made me tell her.”
His expression hardened.
“I tried.”
“No. You asked me.”
“Helen, you know I tried.”
“You brought it up and then accepted no.”
“What was I supposed to do? Tell our daughter behind your back?”
I looked at him.
“Maybe.”
The word surprised both of us.
Then I started crying.
“Maybe someone should have.”
Hannah returned two days later.
She barely spoke to either of us.
She carried the wooden chest upstairs to her room.
For three days, she read David’s letters.
Not all at once.
A few at a time.
Sometimes she came downstairs with swollen eyes.
Sometimes angry.
Sometimes completely silent.
On the fourth evening, she entered the kitchen holding one envelope.
HANNAH — AGE 12.
She looked at David.
“You wrote that you wanted to tell me that year.”
He nodded.
“You wrote that Mom thought I was already having a hard enough time.”
I looked down.
Then Hannah read another line.
“I hope someday you’ll understand that we were only afraid of what knowing might do to you.”
David’s eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t remember writing that.”
“Well, you did.”
She sat across from us.
Then she said something I had spent eighteen years being terrified I would never hear.
“I don’t feel guilty that I lived.”
I looked at her.
She was crying now.
“I feel sad that Rosie died.”
“So do we.”
“I feel strange knowing I had a twin and never knew.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I feel like I’m supposed to miss someone I never met.”
I reached across the table.
She let me take her hand.
Then she said,
“But I don’t feel guilty.”
My throat tightened.
“I’m angry that you decided I would.”
I nodded.
“We made assumptions.”
“You don’t get to decide what I can handle just because you’re afraid of how I’ll react.”
“You’re right.”
