Chapter 8: The Picture She Kept Folded
The envelope didn't look like much. It was white but not clean white, the kind that gets soft at the corners from being kept in a drawer. Mom had folded it in half so it would fit in my shawl pocket, and she'd taped the flap once with clear tape that had started to peel.
Mr. Richard held it with both hands like it was heavier than it was. Vivian stood by the door with her arms crossed, her necklace catching the light every time she breathed.
"You don't need to open that," Vivian said. Her voice was low and smooth again, the way grown-ups talk when they want you to be quiet without yelling. "Whatever your mother told you, sweetheart, this isn't the place."
Richard didn't answer her. He looked at me. His eyes were wet at the corners.
"Is it okay if I open it, Ellie?" he asked.
I nodded. My throat felt tight and I was still holding the cloth with the ring in it, bunched up in my fist. "Mom said you needed to see it."
He sat down on the edge of the little couch and unfolded the letter first. It was one sheet of lined paper, folded in thirds, with Mom's handwriting in blue ink. He read the top line and his hand stopped. He didn't read out loud. He just breathed in through his nose, slow, and his shoulders came up.
Then something slipped.
A small photo fell out from inside the fold and landed face-up on his knee. It was maybe two inches wide, the glossy kind from a drugstore printer. The edges were a little bent.
He picked it up between his thumb and forefinger and stared at it. I leaned forward just enough to see.
It was him. Younger, with darker hair that wasn't all gray yet, wearing a tuxedo. And next to him was Mom. She was younger too, her hair longer and curled, wearing a light blue dress I didn't remember. His arm was around her shoulders and she was laughing, looking up at him. Behind them I could see tables with white cloths and flowers, like the ballroom outside but smaller.
The silence in the room changed.
Vivian made a small sound. Not words, just air. She stepped forward fast and then stopped herself. Her hands came uncrossed.
"Where did you get that," she said. It wasn't a question. Her face had gone pale under her makeup and her mouth was open a little.
Richard didn't look up. He kept looking at the photo.
"When was this?" Vivian said, louder now. She was looking at the photo over his shoulder. "That dinner. That was the foundation dinner. March. Eight years ago."
I didn't know what that meant. I looked at Mom's face in the picture. She looked happy in a way I hadn't seen in a long time. Before she got sick.
Richard finally spoke. His voice was quiet and rough.
"I knew your mom, Ellie," he said. He wasn't talking to Vivian, he was talking to me. "Her name was Caroline Bennett. She worked for the foundation. In the office downtown."
I nodded. Mom had worked in an office. She used to bring home pens with the foundation name on them.
"She was..." He stopped and swallowed. He blinked hard. "After my first wife passed, I... I wasn't doing well. Caroline helped me get through that year. We were close. Very close. Before I met Vivian."
Vivian's hand went to her necklace. She held it like she was steadying herself.
"You told me she was just an assistant," she said to him. Her voice shook. "You told me she resigned and moved away. You told me it wasn't anything."
Richard looked up at her then. His eyes were red.
"It wasn't nothing," he said, soft. "It was before you and I were engaged. I didn't lie about when."
"You let me think I was jealous over nothing," Vivian said. Her words came out fast and sharp now, not smooth anymore. "All this time you acted like I was being possessive. And she was —" She stopped and looked at me, and then back at the photo. Her face twisted. "And you kept this? Caroline kept this?"
I didn't understand what jealous meant exactly but I knew the way her face looked. It was the way Mom looked when she thought I was looking at someone else's dad at the school pick-up line.
Richard turned the photo over. On the back, in Mom's handwriting, it said Caroline & R - Spring Gala '18.
"I didn't know she kept it," he said, almost to himself. "I thought..."
He didn't finish. He looked at me again, and this time he really saw me, not just the cloth or the photo. He looked at my hair and my eyes the way people do when they're trying to see someone else in you.
Vivian took a step back until she hit the wall by the mirror. Her earrings swung a little. She wasn't trying to get me to leave anymore. She was staring at Richard like she'd just realized something she didn't want to.
"Ellie," Richard said carefully, "did your mom say why she kept this picture?"
I shrugged, and my shawl slipped a little off my shoulder. "She just said to show you so you'd remember. So you'd know it was true. She said you were a good man before."
May you like
He made a small noise in his throat and folded the photo back into the letter, gentle, like it might rip. Vivian didn't move. The room felt too warm and too quiet, like after someone says the wrong thing at dinner and no one knows what to do.
The photo stayed on his knee, Mom smiling up at him, and I kept holding the cloth tight because I didn't know what else to hold.
