Life was continuing at full volume.
Then I opened Thomas’s final letter.
Margaret,
If Bennett followed instructions, one year has passed.
You are probably annoyed that I scheduled a letter.
“Correct,” I said aloud.
You are also probably telling me so out loud.
“Correct again.”
Then came the first thing he wanted to say.
I am sorry.
Thomas apologized for not telling me the truth about my mother after he learned it in 1991.
He wrote:
I convinced myself silence was kindness. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was cowardice. Most choices are mixtures.
He did not want me to look at Robert and wonder whether my life with him had been built upon someone else’s lie.
Then he answered the question I had been carrying.
It wasn’t.
Your mother’s lie may have changed the road you traveled, but it did not manufacture the love you found there.
