31. Jess
Jess stood frozen in the living room, clutching Silas’s letter with tears streaming down her cheeks as the house erupted in chaos around her.
It didn’t seem real. None of this seemed real.
Glory was yelling at Anthem.
Liberty was talking quietly but urgently with Everett.
“We can make a flight to Philly,” Liberty told him. “But we have to leave now.”
“I’m not going,” Glory said immediately. “I don’t want to see him.”
“This could be your only chance to say goodbye,” Liberty told her sister, with sympathy in her voice.
“He should have thought of that before he left,” Glory said. “None of us should ever speak to him again.”
“I’m sorry,” Anthem murmured again. “I’m so sorry.”
“We don’t have time to argue,” Everett said crisply. “You’re coming with us, Glory, whether you go in and see him when we get there or not.”
“I won’t,” Glory said lightly.
They were all scrambling around, but Jess couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t join the discussion, even though she knew they needed her.
The pieces of the world as she knew it were breaking apart and tumbling down…
“I’ve got your purse, Mom,” Anthem said softly, wrapping an arm around Jess’s shoulders. “Maybe you can read that in the car.”
She let herself be led outside.
Everett was already in the driver’s seat of the big SUV and Liberty was climbing into the passenger’s seat beside him, still reading him flight info.
Justine climbed into the back seat behind her dad, and Jess and Anthem got in beside her, with Anthem in the middle.
“Glory,” Jess murmured.
“She’s already in the way back,” Anthem told her. “She didn’t want to be near me.”
Jess squeezed Anthem’s knee, for once unable to say the words her daughter needed to hear. She hoped Anthem understood her gesture, and knew that her sister would forgive her. Glory just needed time.
“I’ll hold that while you put on your seatbelt,” Anthem offered, holding her hand out for the letter.
Jess had to concentrate to make her fingers let go of the half-crumpled envelope. As promised, Anthem held it carefully and handed it back as soon as Jess’s seatbelt was on. The car started with a roar and Everett tore out of the driveway, kicking up dust.
“GPS says we’ll make it, but barely,” Liberty said quietly to Everett. “We just have to hope there’s no traffic.”
“We’ll make up time on the road,” Everett said. “This thing is fast.”
Jess clutched the letter, staring down at it. She had longed for answers all this time, desperate for closure. Or at least, she had thought that’s what she was desperate for.
Now the answers were right here in her hand, laid out in a letter from Silas himself. And she couldn’t bring herself to read it.
Everything in the car was silent except the rush of the road under the tires, and the GPS pinging occasionally to say they were moving too fast.
Her daughters were losing their father and in spite of their anger, she could feel the weight of their sadness in the tension-filled air of the car. The moment she opened this letter, all of it would be real.
Everett met her eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Jess,” he said softly. “I can give you the gist of what’s going on, if you don’t want to read that letter right now.”
The temptation to let Everett explain was almost irresistible.
But Jess had to do this, for herself and for the mourning and healing that was ahead of her, but even more so for her daughters.
For Liberty, her firstborn, who was struggling with her own marriage, and needed to understand how precious each moment might be.
For Anthem, feeling so guilty beside her that Jess should practically taste it, just because she had spoken to Silas while she was away at college studying music.
And for Glory, who was weeping furiously in the rear facing seat. Her young life had been wrecked when her father left, and he hadn’t even told her why.
“No,” she told Everett firmly. “I’ll read it myself.”
Somehow, she opened the letter, in spite of her shaking hands, and unfolded the sheet of paper inside.
Dearest Jessica,
If you’re reading this, it means the treatments didn’t work.
I am sorry, because I wanted nothing more than to get well again and come home to you and our girls.
And I am also sorry because I know I caused you pain by leaving.
But I hope you understand now that I saved you and the girls the pain of watching someone you love waste away.
Jess pressed her hand to her mouth to cover a sob.
He had known he was dying. He had known from the beginning, and chosen not to tell them. Pain and fury battled in Jess’s chest and hot tears slid down her cheeks all over again.
He had robbed them of the last of their time together, robbed her of the chance to care for him.
Anthem wrapped her hand around her mother’s knee and squeezed.
“I can’t read this, I can’t…” Jess murmured.
“You don’t have to,” Anthem whispered.
But she did have to. This might be the last thing he ever told her.
She took a deep breath and kept reading.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw you. My world was dark back then. I was an unhappy man, and everything I looked at seemed to have been drained of its color. All I wanted was to disappear into that house and never be seen again.
People came all the time after my first wife died. The gaggle of gardeners that day was no different. They just wanted to see the flowers and the house and whisper about the ghost of the man who lived there.
But one thing was different that day. It was you.
You don’t know this, but I was watching out the window that day as you arrived. Everyone was walking right for the rose garden. It was perfectly manicured, and there had recently been a photo of it included in one of those silly gardening magazines. It was the reason they’d come.
But you went for the rhododendrons, my Jess. I couldn’t tear my eyes from that sweet young girl, drawn to the unkempt forest of dark leaves. The plants had gone leggy and overgrown, but you found a single budding cluster and cupped the buds in your hand. There was such wonder in your face. It was like you were filled with light, a light that radiated from you and touched everything you looked at.
And for the first time in years, I wanted something fiercely. I wanted you to look at me. I wanted to drown myself in that joyous light.
I couldn’t bear to put out that light with my illness, my love. I know you watched your mother suffer, just as I watched my father die, and then my wife. I had to spare you and the girls from that. It was my final gift to you.
You understand now why I haven’t signed our divorce papers or agreed to sell the house. Everything is yours.
I hope you’ll fill the house with friends and grandchildren one day. I hope you’ll travel and see the world, and I hope you’ll come home again and be at peace. I hope you’ll read good books and eat good food and share your days with good people who love you.
The most beautiful light in all the world shines within you, Jessica. I hope the path to happiness lights up in front of you, and you follow it with all your heart.
Yours,
Silas
Jess wept for a long time.
She wept for Silas’s sadness and the reasons he had made such a selfish, foolish choice. At this rate, they probably wouldn’t make it back to him in time, and he would die alone.
And it would all be for nothing, because what he had done by not trusting her with one of the most important events of his life was unforgivable.
She wept for her own loss and for the honor it would have been to be by his side throughout his battle, and hold his hand as he finally surrendered.
And she wept for her girls, having to say goodbye without getting to say the words to him.
She had no idea how much time had passed when she began to sense all their eyes on her. Taking a deep breath, she decided the time for tears was over. Her girls needed her now.
She folded the letter again and carefully slid it back into the envelope.
“You okay?” Everett asked, glancing back at her again.
“Yes,” Jess told him. “Of course I am. Let’s catch that plane.”
Anthem squeezed her knee and Everett nodded to her in the mirror, a look of admiration in his eyes.