Chapter Eight #2
“Only because I think she should hear from you,” Sebastian replied.
“Not because she deserves an easy hold on your conscience, and not because I want you to give in to her. Quite the opposite. I think you should write and tell her what you have decided. Tell her you are staying here. Tell her you are married and that you do not mean to return simply because she has found it convenient to summon you now. I think it could be healing for you.”
“I have composed a dozen replies in my head since the letter came,” she admitted. “Some of them were kinder than she deserves, and some of them were crueler than I wish to be. I do not know which version of myself should be answering her.”
He considered that. “Then write the truest version,” he said. “You don’t need to be cruel. But you don’t need to give in either. Tell her that you are not coming, and let that be enough.”
After he’d put his coat on, he crossed back to her, tipped her chin up with one finger, and kissed her.
“Write the letter,” he said softly. “And while you do, remember what I told you. I am not sending you away. If your mother writes again, she writes to a married woman in her own home, not a girl waiting to be told what to do.”
She reached up and caught his wrist before he could step back entirely. “Thank you,” she said, and because the words were too small for everything she meant, she rose on her toes and kissed him. His answering smile stayed with her long after the door closed behind him and his footsteps faded.
For a little while after he left, Lula simply moved through the cabin putting things to rights.
She washed the bowls, wiped the table, shook out the cloth, and laid another stick of wood on the fire.
At last, there was nothing left to straighten.
Her mother’s letter lay where she had placed it the night before, and beside it, after a long hesitation, Lula set out paper, ink, and pen.
She sat for so long with the pen in her hand and the blank sheet before her that the tip of her forefinger grew smudged with ink before she had formed a single word.
The temptation to write angrily was still there.
But Sebastian had been right. Cruelty would not free her.
What she wanted, she realized at last, was not to wound her mother, but to speak in her own voice and let that voice stand.
Mother,
I received your letter and was saddened to learn of Father’s death. Whatever stood between us in life, he was still my father. I wish matters had been otherwise between us all, and I wish there had been time in this world for better things than what we were given.
That said, I must answer you plainly. I will not be returning to New York. I am married now, and my home is in Alaska with my husband, Sebastian. He is a good man, and I am where I mean to remain.
You wrote that all would be forgiven if I came home immediately.
I do not accept that, for I have done nothing that requires forgiveness.
I married Bill because I loved him, and I have never felt that I was doing wrong for loving him.
He was a good and honorable man, and whatever you or Father believed of him does not change that truth.
I lost him, and I lost my family with him, but I will not pretend now that I was wrong to be his wife to make anyone more comfortable with the past.
I do not write this in anger. There has been enough anger.
I write it because I am tired of silence and because I would rather speak honestly than leave you to imagine I might still be summoned and arranged like furniture in one of your drawing rooms. I am no longer the daughter you once directed in all things.
I make my own choices, and I have made this one.
I am sorry that Father died before any true reconciliation was possible.
I do not know whether he ever wished for one.
Perhaps he did not. But I will not return now to stand in that house and behave as if the years between us were caused only by youthful stubbornness. Too much was said. Too much was done.
If, in time, you wish to write to me, I will read what you send. But I will not come back merely to be pardoned for a life I do not regret.
Lula
When she finished, Lula read the letter through, her pulse quickening at several lines, but she did not cross out a single word.
It was not a perfect letter, nor a gentle one, and perhaps it would wound her mother to receive it, but it was honest, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, honesty did not feel like a danger.
She folded the pages carefully, addressed them in a steady hand, and sat for a moment with them resting beneath her palm.
She would take the letter to Katie to post before she began her daily hunt. The weather had turned colder, but she would bundle up, and it would all be good. It looked like snow was on the horizon, so she wanted to spend the rest of her day outdoors as she preferred.
She tucked the letter into her coat as she headed for town. For a moment, she wondered what her mother would think of her running about in the cold, shooting animals. She giggled as she thought of it. Perhaps she should have told her mother that she was a huntress.