Yet his eyes remained fixed on me.
He had been carrying this story alone for too long.
“Margaret searched for years,” he said.
“Without telling you?”
“At first.”
“Why?”
“She wasn’t sure your mother’s confession was true.”
That made sense.
If a stranger had written to me claiming my entire marriage had been built partly on forged letters, I wouldn’t have known what to believe either.
“Eventually she showed me.”
“When?”
“2003.”
Seventeen years after we’d stopped speaking.
“What did you do?”
Douglas gave a humorless laugh.
“I drove to your mother’s house.”
My body went cold.
“You came there?”
“I sat outside for an hour.”
“Did you knock?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you were there.”
Everything inside me stilled.
“What?”
“I saw you through the front window.”
I remembered 2003.
My father had died that spring.
I had come home for nearly two months to help my mother.
