Chapter 3 - WHAT WE CHOSE TO KEEP
For nearly a minute, neither of us touched the letter.
My handwriting stared back at me from seven months ago.
KATHERINE.
I remembered writing her name.
I remembered the hotel room in Copenhagen where I had sat beside a rain-streaked window at three in the morning, unable to sleep because the bed beside me was empty.
I remembered writing five letters because calling required courage in real time, while paper allowed a coward to edit himself.
But I did not remember which letter this was.
Kate turned the envelope over.
There was no postmark.
“How did it get here?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You mailed them from Europe?”
“I gave them to my assistant.”
“All five?”
“Yes.”
“Then this one should have been mailed.”
“Yes.”
She looked toward the hallway.
“Could Thomas have brought it?”
“Possibly.”
The old version of me would already have been calling him.
I would have demanded records, explanations, dates.
Instead I looked at Kate.
“It’s addressed to you.”
Her fingers traced the edge.
“You wrote it.”
“But it belongs to you.”
She glanced up.
“Do you want to know what it says?”
“Very much.”
A small smile appeared.
“Then sit down.”
We sat together on the sofa.
Not touching.
Close enough that I could hear the faint movement of the paper as she opened the envelope.
She unfolded two sheets.
Her eyes moved across the first line.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is obviously not nothing.”
“You had terrible handwriting.”
“I was emotional.”
“That apparently affected your penmanship.”
“Kate.”
She smiled.
Then she began reading silently.
I watched her instead of the page.
Her amusement disappeared first.
Then her guardedness.
Halfway down the second page, she covered her mouth.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
When she finished, she didn’t immediately speak.
“What did I say?”
She looked at me.
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember writing several versions of everything I should have said before leaving.”
Kate lowered the pages.
“You said you woke up that morning and wanted to cancel the trip.”
I remembered that.
“You said you didn’t because you were afraid staying would make promises you didn’t know how to keep.”
I looked away.
“You said the night before had changed something.”
“Yes.”
“And that you missed me.”
“Yes.”
“And…”
She stopped.
“What?”
Her eyes met mine.
“You said you loved me.”
There it was.
The sentence I had spent two years avoiding and seven months believing had arrived too late.
“I did.”
“You never told me.”
“I tried.”
“No.” Her voice was gentle. “You wrote it. That isn’t quite the same.”
I almost argued.
Then I realized she was right.
“I love you.”
Kate became very still.
I had imagined saying those words under different circumstances.
Perhaps in some elegant room.
Perhaps after repairing everything.
Perhaps when I could be certain she would say them back.
Instead, I said them in an old study while divorce papers waited in a drawer and neither of us knew whether our marriage could survive the truth.
“I loved you when I left,” I continued. “I loved you when you stopped answering. I loved you when I convinced myself that letting you go was the honorable thing to do. And I love you now.”
Her eyes shone.
“That doesn’t fix everything.”
“I know.”
“You hurt me.”
“I know.”
“I hurt you too.”
I shook my head.
“Kate—”
“I did.”
She folded the letter carefully.
“I could have found another way to reach you. I could have gone to Matthew. I could have called your hotel directly. I could have refused to accept Thomas’s message.”
“You were pregnant and alone.”
“I was also proud.”
I knew something about pride.
Perhaps that was why we had recognized one another long before we knew how to love one another.
“What happens now?” I asked.
She looked toward the window.
May you like
“We find out what happened to the letters.”
“And after that?”
