Chapter 13
In October, the garden started changing color.
Annie loved raking leaves into piles and then complaining when Arthur wouldn’t let her jump into them because they were supposed to become compost.
Grace returned to work part-time.
Arthur hated that.
Grace ignored him.
Helen persuaded her to reduce her hours.
Grace listened to Helen.
Arthur complained that this proved Grace was capable of reason when properly advised.
Grace threatened to rake leaves onto his porch.
Somehow, they were becoming friends.
Neither would have admitted it.
Then one Saturday, Mrs. Alvarez found a locked wooden box in the back of the greenhouse.
“Mr. Whitmore,” she called, “this has Eleanor’s name on it.”
Arthur froze.
The box was small, cedar-colored, with a brass latch.
He took it carefully.
“I haven’t seen this in years.”
“Do you have the key?” I asked.
Arthur thought for a moment.
Then he looked at the recovered ring on his hand.
Not wearing it.
He had threaded it onto a leather cord.
Attached beside it was a tiny brass key.
Annie gasped.
“You’ve had it the whole time!”
Arthur stared at the key as though he had never noticed it before.
“Eleanor put that key with the ring years before she lost it.”
He opened the box.
Inside were letters, photographs, receipts, and several small notebooks.
Arthur touched the top notebook.
“My wife handled most of our charitable work.”
Grace glanced at the papers.
“You should probably look through those privately.”
Arthur nodded.
But as he lifted the first bundle, an envelope slipped onto the floor.
I picked it up.
There was a name on the front.
Grace Foster.
Grace went still.
Arthur stared.
“That isn’t my handwriting.”
Grace took the envelope.
The writing was soft and slanted.
Eleanor Whitmore.
The date in the corner was six years earlier.
Three months after our parents died.
Arthur looked genuinely shaken.
“Eleanor was alive then,” he whispered.
Grace turned the envelope over.
The seal had never been broken.
“Why would your wife write to me?”
“I don’t know.”
Arthur sat down slowly.
May you like
“I never knew she had.”
Grace looked at me, then Annie, then the unopened letter.
