Chapter 4: What the Letters Said
Sarah slept for most of the first day.
When she woke, the room was dim and Margaret was still in the chair.
She had not gone home.
She had not moved to the waiting area.
She was simply there, her left hand in her lap, her right arm resting at her side, her eyes open and watching the fetal monitor as though the sound of it was the only thing keeping her in place.
"You didn't leave," Sarah said.
"No."
"You should sleep."
"I slept in the chair." Margaret shifted slightly.
"I've slept in worse."
Sarah looked at her for a moment, then looked at the envelope still sitting on the table beside her arm.
She hadn't touched it.
She wasn't sure she was ready to.
"Tell me what's in them," she said.
"You should read them yourself."
"Tell me what's in the first one."
Margaret was quiet for a long moment.
"I apologized," she said finally.
"In all of them.
But the first one — I tried to explain why I said what I said.
The day you left."
"And?"
"And I didn't do a very good job of explaining it." Margaret's left hand moved to her knee.
"Your father had been gone two years by then.
I was still — I wasn't managing well.
And you were talking about going into disaster zones.
Into places where people were dying.
And I couldn't — " She stopped.
"I couldn't lose you the way I lost him.
So I said something terrible instead."
Sarah was very still.
"Dad died in a car accident," she said.
"On a Tuesday morning.
On a dry road.
Going to work."
"I know."
"He wasn't in a disaster zone.
He wasn't chasing anything.
He was just driving."
"I know that too," Margaret said.
"I knew it then.
It didn't matter.
Fear doesn't follow logic, Sarah.
I'm not asking you to excuse it.
I'm just telling you what it was."
The IV machine made a soft sound.
Sarah looked at the ceiling.
"What's in the second one?" she asked.
"The second year — you would have been twenty-two.
I wrote about the garden.
The one your father planted along the back fence." Margaret almost smiled.
"The roses came back that spring.
Better than they ever had when he was alive.
I thought that was something you'd want to know."
Sarah's throat tightened.
She said nothing.
"The third one was after the hurricane.
The big one — Katrina.
I saw the news coverage.
I saw the rescue teams going in.
I kept looking at the faces." Margaret paused.
"I don't know what I was looking for."
"You were looking for me."
"Yes."
"I was there," Sarah said.
"I was in the Ninth Ward for three weeks."
Margaret closed her eyes briefly.
"I know.
Mrs.
Collins found a newspaper article.
Someone had taken a photograph.
You were carrying a child out of a flooded house." She opened her eyes.
"You looked exactly like yourself.
Completely calm.
Like it was the most natural thing in the world."
"It was what I was trained for."
"It was who you always were," Margaret said.
"I just couldn't see it then.
I thought I was losing you to something dangerous.
I didn't understand that you were the one running toward the danger so other people could be safe."
The room was very quiet.
Sarah reached out and picked up the envelope.
She didn't open it.
She just held it, feeling the soft worn edges, the slight thickness of the folded paper inside.
"There's something else," Margaret said.
Sarah looked at her.
"In the last letter.
The one I wrote this year, after the str0ke." Margaret's voice was careful.
Measured.
Like someone walking on ice they weren't sure would hold.
"There's something I never told you.
Something I should have told you before you left.
Before any of this."
"What is it?"
"Read the letter first."
"Mom." The word came out before Sarah could stop it.
She hadn't called her that in sixteen years.
It hung in the air between them, strange and familiar at the same time.
"Just tell me."
Margaret looked at her daughter.
At the mud still caught in her hair.
At the IV in her arm.
At the shape of her pregnant belly beneath the thin hospital blanket.
"Your father," she said slowly, "didn't have an accident."
Sarah's hand tightened on the envelope.
"What?"
"The road was dry.
The car was fine.
There was no other vehicle." Margaret's voice didn't waver, but her left hand was pressing hard into her knee now.
"The police ruled it an accident because there was nothing to suggest otherwise.
But I found something, six months after he died.
In his desk.
In a folder he had hidden at the back of the bottom drawer."
"What did you find?"
Margaret reached into her cardigan pocket again.
She set a folded piece of paper on the table.
It was old.
The creases were deep, the paper slightly yellowed.
But the handwriting on the front was unmistakably Sarah's father.
It was addressed to Margaret.
"I couldn't tell you then," Margaret said.
"You were twenty.
You were already leaving.
And I — I didn't know what it meant.
I still don't know what it means.
But I think you need to know that it exists."
Sarah stared at the folded paper.
She did not reach for it yet.
"Is that why you never sent the letters?" she asked.
Margaret looked at her hands.
"Partly," she said.
"I didn't know how to tell you the rest of the story when I didn't understand it myself."
Outside the window, the Louisiana sky had gone the pale grey of early morning.
A cart rolled past in the hallway.
May you like
The fetal monitor kept its steady count.
Sarah picked up her father's letter.
