Chapter 12
My mom didn't move right away after she said it. She just stood there with her hand on the granite and stared at the shoebox that wasn't even in the room yet.
Claire had said it so quietly I almost didn't hear it. There's a box in my closet. I thought Daniel would ask what was in it, but he didn't. He just nodded like he already knew.
"How many?" he asked.
"Three," she said. "Maybe four."
Ethan's stomach dropped and that was me, my hands still holding the photo and that paper he'd slid next to it. The envelope from the island was still there too, its string a little loose now where Daniel had undone it. I could feel my pulse in my thumbs.
Claire looked at me then. Really looked at me. "Stay here," she said. "Okay? Just stay right here with Daniel for one minute."
I didn't want her to leave the kitchen. The hallway behind her was still dark the way it had been when Daniel walked down it, and I kept thinking if she went back there she'd disappear. But she already was walking, past the island, past the fridge, her beige shirt catching the warm light. Her steps were quick on the hardwood. She didn't turn on the hall light.
Daniel and I were alone at the island. He didn't try to fill the silence. He rested his hands on the counter, his brown leather watch catching a little glare, and watched the hallway where she'd gone. I could hear a closet door slide open down the hall, hangers shifting.
"Are those from him too?" I asked, and my voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to.
"Yeah," Daniel said. "Michael wrote them."
"To my mom?"
He glanced down at me. "To Claire. Every year or so after she left. He didn't know where to send them, so he just kept them with me."
It didn't make sense and it did at the same time. I stared at the seal on the envelope in front of us, that dark reddish-brown wax that had made my mom go white. I thought about how she'd recognized it instantly.
Claire came back carrying a plain white shoebox, the kind sneakers come in, with the lid a little bowed in the middle. She held it with both hands like it weighed more than it did. She set it on the island next to the envelope and the photo, and didn't open it right away.
"I never threw them away," she said, mostly to me. "I told myself I kept them in case I needed... I don't know. Proof that I wasn't making it up. But I never opened any of them after the first one I left on the counter that night."
She lifted the lid. Inside were three envelopes. Tan, tied with the same thin string, closed with the same dark wax seal. They were a little more yellowed at the edges, a little dustier, but otherwise identical. One had a faint crease where it had been pressed under something heavy.
I picked one up before she could stop me. The string was rough between my fingers. The wax was smooth and cool, stamped with the same little mark, a circle with a line through it I hadn't noticed before. I put it next to the new envelope Daniel had brought. Side by side on the granite, there was no difference. Same paper. Same knot. Same color seal.
"They're exactly the same," I said.
Claire swallowed. "I know."
My hand was shaking a little so I put the envelope down. "Why didn't you open them?"
She stared at the three old ones like she was seeing ten years of her own nights. "Because if I opened them, I'd have to answer them. And if I answered them, I'd have to tell him about you. And if I told him about you, I was scared he'd want to be your dad and I wouldn't know how to let him. Or worse, that he wouldn't."
That last part hit me harder than anything she'd said with Michael's name. I could hear Daniel breathing next to us, slow and even. He didn't jump in to rescue her.
"When did he write the last one?" I asked Daniel.
Daniel reached out and turned one of the older envelopes over gently, not opening it. On the back, in faded black ink, was a date. 2019. Another said 2021. The third, 2022.
"He wrote one every time he tried to call and I told him she didn't want to talk," Daniel said. "He'd write it, seal it, give it to me. Said hold it for her in case she ever changes her mind. He stopped last spring."
"Why?" I said.
"Because he got sick," Daniel said. "Chemo makes it hard to hold a pen. He asked me to bring this last one instead. He thought if Claire saw the seal again in person, she'd finally have to choose."
I looked at my mom. Her eyes were wet but she wasn't crying. She had her hand on the edge of the shoebox, her gold earrings catching the light.
"I wasn't trying to hurt you, Ethan," she said. "I was just trying to keep it sealed. Like the wax. I thought if I never broke it, nothing bad could get in."
I didn't say it's okay because it wasn't, not yet. But I understood it for the first time. It wasn't that she didn't care about Michael or about me knowing. She'd been scared for so long she'd turned the fear into a box and put it on a shelf.
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I lined up all four envelopes in a row on the island, the three old ones and the one Daniel had carried down our dark hallway that night. Four identical seals staring up at us. My photo was still underneath my palm, my dad's younger face looking up at mine.
I wasn't ready to say we'd go. I wasn't ready to forgive the closet. But I wasn't mad the way I'd been an hour ago either.
