“Yes.”
“He was good to me.”
“I know.”
I frowned.
“How?”
“Thomas knew too.”
Eleanor touched the envelope.
“That’s why he didn’t interfere.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“He just disappeared?”
“He decided that loving you meant allowing you to have a stable father.”
I’d spent my life interpreting his absence as rejection.
Now Eleanor was describing it as a painful sacrifice.
I wasn’t sure how to reconcile those ideas.
“What’s in the letter?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never opened it?”
“It wasn’t mine.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“I promised Thomas I would deliver it when you turned eighteen.”
My voice hardened.
“I’m thirty-eight.”
“I know.”
“Then you’re twenty years late.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because after Thomas d/i/e/d, your mother begged me not to.”
I stood.
“She knew?”
“Yes.”
“She knew you had this?”
