Emma looked down.
“But it made us promise that we would never give you the letter.”
I looked at them at three.
“Why?”
Sophie’s voice broke.
“Because he said if you knew the truth, you could see us differently. Maybe you wouldn’t want us anymore.”
I almost laughed.
“What truth could that do?”
No one answered.
Emma pushed the envelope towards me.
My mother’s handwriting was in the front.
Older.
More trembling.
But unmistakable.
I opened it.
The paper inside smelled slightly rancid, as if it had been years waiting in a drawer.
The first line played like a slap.
“My dear son, I left because I found out what none of you should ever know…”
I stopped.
Grace covered her mouth.
I kept reading.
Mom wrote that she had waited until the girls were adults because she could not take the truth to the grave, but that she still could not be encouraged to tell usI have taken a breath.
