On the fourth morning, I sat at my tiny kitchen table while rain tapped against the trailer roof.
Then I opened the letter.
Dear Margaret,
If you are reading this, then several unlikely things have happened. I am gone. Thomas found you. And somehow you became important enough to him again that he decided you should know I once knew your name.
I stopped reading.
Then continued.
Please do not mistake this letter for permission. Thomas never needed my permission to live after I was gone. Nor do you need permission to love someone who has already loved another person.
My eyes filled.
Evelyn explained that Thomas told her about me during the first year of their marriage.
Not because he still belonged to me.
He loved Evelyn.
Fully.
She made that very clear.
She learned about me because she found the old diamond ring.
Thomas told her he had loved a girl named Margaret at seventeen.
