I held out the note. “Read it.”
She read it once, then started again more slowly. She set it down beside the letters.
“She did this?” she asked.
“Her handwriting,” I said. “And our letters.”
My daughter ran her finger along the flap of one of my envelopes without touching the writing. “I thought you were going to make a scene. I thought people would say you’d been waiting for this.”
“I was afraid of that too.”
“I shouldn’t have tried to stop you.”
“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”
It wasn’t a thing I enjoyed saying to her. I’d been angry with her since the funeral, and I knew I’d let that anger turn sharp. Her warning had come from worry, not from wanting to hurt me. But I wasn’t going to tell her it was all right when it wasn’t.
She looked again at the letters. “Are you going to tell the family?”
I looked at Dewitt. He’d gone very still. I knew the truth could make people feel as if they had to choose between the Madge they loved and the woman who had done this. I didn’t want to take away the years Dewitt had shared with her. I also wasn’t willing to let the lie stand as my part of the story.
“If I tell them, they’ll say I’m making her funeral about me,” I said. “Maybe they’ll think I waited until she couldn’t answer.”
My daughter started to say something, then stopped.
Maybe they were right about me. Maybe there was a part of me that had wanted to know whether Dewitt still cared. I couldn’t deny that. But the letters were in front of us. I was done acting as if the question didn’t matter.
