Chapter 13 - Unfinished Sentences
I stared at the page.
Then at the wooden box Sarah had given me.
There had been no papers about my father inside.
Which meant Evelyn had kept them somewhere else.
And Sarah had inherited everything Evelyn left behind.
I called her.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Nathan?”
“Your mother had papers.”
“What papers?”
“My mother says they were about my father.”
There was silence.
Then Sarah spoke slowly.
“There’s one more envelope.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“You found it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because it isn’t addressed to you.”
I closed my eyes.
“Who is it addressed to?”
Sarah hesitated.
When she answered, her voice was quiet.
“Your father.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she added the part that changed everything again.
“Nathan… it was never mailed.”
For several seconds, I said nothing.
I sat alone in my office, my mother’s letter open on the desk, the city spread beyond the windows in a blur of white lights.
On the phone, Sarah waited.
“You said the envelope is addressed to my father?”
“Yes.”
“And your mother kept it all these years?”
“As far as I can tell.”
I looked again at the line my mother had written.
You grew up believing he left us because he wanted another life.
That is not the whole truth.
My father had been absent from my life for more than forty years.
I had stopped wondering about him a long time ago.
At least, that was what I had told myself.
“Don’t open it,” I said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I’ll come tomorrow.”
“Nathan, it’s nearly ten.”
“I know.”
“I mean tomorrow during normal human hours.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
“You sound like your mother.”
“So you’ve been told.”
Before we hung up, Sarah added, “There’s something else.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course there is.”
“The envelope isn’t sealed.”
That changed something.
“Was it opened?”
“I don’t think so. It looks like it was never sealed in the first place.”
I glanced toward the wooden box on the corner of my desk.
“Then maybe my mother never intended to send it.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe she changed her mind.”
“That too.”
I hated how many possibilities existed.
For most of my life, I had preferred problems with clean answers.
A building was either profitable or it wasn’t.
A loan was either approved or denied.
A contract was either signed or unsigned.
Families did not work that way.
They contained unfinished sentences.
Old loyalties.
Misunderstandings everyone assumed were facts because no one had ever gone back to check.
May you like
I folded my mother’s letter carefully.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
