Chapter 14: Letting Go
Winter arrived early, bringing with it a hard, clear cold that settled into the bones of the old house. I sold it in January.
The new place was smaller, closer to the water, with a single bedroom and a kitchen that looked out over a stretch of gray shoreline. I kept only what I needed: a few pieces of furniture, the photo albums, Robert’s leather-bound college book, and the blue Ford. The car sat under a tarp in the small carport, rust and all. Some mornings I uncovered it, sat in the driver’s seat with the windows down, and let the past move through me without demanding anything in return.
Mark sent a letter in February. Not a legal document. A real one, handwritten on plain paper. He wrote about the phone call the night before the funeral, about how the words still woke him sometimes. He wrote that he understood now why his father had done what he did. He did not ask for money. He only asked if the door to ordinary conversation might someday be unlocked.
I wrote back once, briefly.
The door is not locked. But the fortune is not the key, and it never will be.
May you like
Lucas sent nothing. I did not expect him to.
In the small garden behind the new house I planted white lilies. They came up stubbornly in the cold soil, the same flowers that had been missing from the chapel. I tended them without sentimentality, the way Robert used to tend the things that mattered—quietly, consistently, without needing an audience.
