Chapter 7: What Daniel's Letter Said
She read it at her kitchen table at half past eleven that night.
One lamp on.
The box open beside her.
The rest of the flat quiet.
She'd made tea first.
Earl Grey, because it was what Arthur had ordered and it felt right somehow.
She'd sat down, smoothed the envelope flat on the table, and then sat there for ten minutes before she opened it.
*Natalie,*
*If you're reading this, then Arthur found a way to give it to you, which means you found him, or he found you, or the universe finally decided to stop being so stubborn about keeping us apart.
I'm choosing to believe it was the universe.
It makes a better story.*
*I want to tell you some things.
Not to excuse myself — I have no interest in that — but because you deserve the truth from me directly, in my own words, without anyone else deciding what you're ready to hear.*
*I was not a good husband to your mother.
I want to be honest about that.
I was struggling with things I didn't have names for yet, and I handled it badly, and I made her life harder than it should have been.
She was right to leave.
I'm not angry about that.
I was, for a long time, but I'm not anymore.*
*What I am is sorry that you were the collateral damage.
You didn't choose any of it.
You were three years old and you had no vote.
That's the part I've never made peace with.*
*I looked for you.
I need you to know that.
I know your mother may have told you something different, and I'm not asking you to take my word over hers — she was your mother and she loved you and she did what she thought was right.
But I looked.
I hired people.
I drove to your street once when you were nineteen and I sat outside like a coward and then drove home, and I have regretted it every day since.*
*You were right there.
I should have knocked.*
*I don't know what your life has looked like.
I don't know if you're happy, or what work you do, or whether you like the same things I liked at your age — history, bad weather, tea that's too strong, dogs of any kind.
I don't know if you've ever felt the absence of me the way I felt the absence of you, and I would never assume that you have.*
*But I want you to know this:*
*I thought about you every single day.
Not in a sad way — well, sometimes in a sad way — but mostly in the way you think about someone who is out in the world doing things you'll never get to see.
I thought: she's probably clever.
She's probably stubborn.
She probably argues with people who are wrong and doesn't apologize for it.*
*I hope I'm right.*
*My father is a good man.
The best man I've ever known.
If you've met him — and if you're reading this, you have — then you already know that.
Take care of him if you can.
He's been very alone since your grandmother died, and he deserves someone to have tea with.*
*I'm sorry I ran out of time before I could be braver.*
*I love you.
I have always loved you.
I loved you before I even knew your name.*
*Your dad,*
*Daniel*
Natalie sat at the kitchen table for a long time after that.
She didn't try to stop the tears.
There was no point.
They came the way they come when something has been held back for a very long time — not dramatically, just steadily, the way rain falls when it has finally decided to fall.
She thought about her mother.
About the moves, the fresh starts, the careful silences.
She thought about a twenty-six-year-old woman with a three-year-old daughter and a marriage that had broken her, making the only decision she knew how to make.
She thought about how easy it is to simplify someone into a story that lets you survive.
She thought about a man sitting outside her street in a car, watching her walk away, and driving home.
She thought about eleven birthday cards in a shoebox.
*I should have knocked.*
She picked up her phone.
It was late — nearly midnight — but she opened a new message and typed Arthur's number from the card he'd pressed into her hand when she left.
She wrote: *I read it.
Thank you for keeping it safe for so long.
I'll come on Saturday if that's all right.*
She put the phone down.
Picked up the letter again.
Read the last paragraph one more time.
*Take care of him if you can.
He's been very alone since your grandmother died, and he deserves someone to have tea with.*
Her phone lit up.
Arthur.
Replying at midnight, which told her everything she needed to know about how he'd spent his evening.
*Saturday is perfect.
I'll make lunch.
— Arthur*
Then, a moment later: *He was right about you, by the way.
I could tell in the bank.*
She wrote back: *What was he right about?*
Three minutes passed.
Then: *That you were probably stubborn.
He would have liked that very much.*
She set the phone down.
Outside her window, the street was quiet.
A car passed.
Someone's light was on in the building across the road.
She folded the letter back into its envelope.
Placed it on top of the birthday cards.
Closed the box lid gently.
*Your dad.*
May you like
Two words she had waited twenty-five years to read and had stopped believing she ever would.
She made a second cup of tea — too strong, the way she'd always made it without knowing why — and sat with it until it was gone.
