Chapter Twenty-Four #2
I’m glad you finally got those drawing supplies.
I love your idea about the giraffe family.
Maisie will, too. I hope you’re still enjoying your outside crew work now that you’re in charge of Solomon.
That night he lost it and they made the rest of us leave early?
His stepmother, Adrienne, came up to me in the parking lot.
She asked if I had a few minutes because she really needed someone to talk to.
I just wanted to get home, but after what happened in there, how could I say no?
So the two of us sat in my car for half an hour.
Boy, did I get an earful! I hope he doesn’t drive you crazy.
Corby, I want to respond to some of the things you wrote in your last letter, but I hear my mother’s car in the driveway. They’re home earlier than expected, so I have to go. I’ll finish this letter after Maisie goes to bed.
Okay, I’m back. Mom said Maisie took a long nap during The Nutcracker , so I couldn’t get her to sleep until after nine. Like I said, I need to reply to some of the things you wrote in your last letter, and if I don’t get it done tonight, there’ll be no time to finish it during the week.
First of all, I guess I forgot to tell you that my father and Ana broke up last year. Dad relocated to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. There are a lot of wealthy expats from the US there so he gets plenty of carpentry jobs. He seems happy.
Corby, I’m not selling the house. Moving back to California with you and Maisie is off the table. Niko’s death would be with us in California, too. So would your record. You can’t just drive away from that either. Sorry to be so blunt, but assuming otherwise is just magical thinking.
You ask how my work with Dr. Patel is going. It’s been worthwhile, but really challenging having to confront the fact that
Sorry, Corby, but I have to get to bed. I probably shouldn’t have poured myself a glass of wine when I sat down to finish this. The next thing I knew, I woke up drooling with my head on the table. Not pretty!
Okay, it’s Monday morning and I’m at school.
My class has back-to-back specials—music and gym—so I have about ninety minutes.
I usually use this time to correct papers, but I really want to get this letter finished and off to you.
The kids’ journals and their quizzes on adding and subtracting fractions will have to wait.
As I started to say, my work with Dr. Patel hasn’t been easy but it’s been helpful.
She’s getting me to face a lot of things I might prefer to avoid.
Can I find a way to let go of the anger that still lives beneath the grief I feel about losing Niko?
Can I forgive you—for Maisie’s sake, and for yours and mine?
I don’t know yet. That’s what’s so hard about this whole thing—so freaking confusing.
Until the day you did what you did, you were a great dad.
Warm and loving, the fun parent. It was obvious how crazy the twins were about their daddy and sometimes I envied that.
I need to be honest with you about something else.
After you went to prison, I met with a divorce lawyer.
Just one time. I decided to postpone making a decision until after you’re released.
Whether or not I eventually pursue it will depend on some of the things I mentioned that I’m working on.
And I will need proof of your continuing sobriety.
If you start using or drinking again, that will be a dealbreaker.
But for now, and for the rest of your incarceration, you and I will stay married.
I want to address something else you said in your letter: that you’ve always needed me more than I’ve needed you.
I don’t think in those terms, Corby, but I feel your absence and sometimes it’s painful.
You’re not in our bed (snoring), you’re not in the kitchen making breakfast, you’re not picking out something for us to watch on Netflix.
Last week, after Maisie went to sleep, I was putting the photo album we’d been looking at back on the shelf when an envelope of loose pictures fell out—photos from that first summer when we started dating.
One of those pictures has always been my favorite.
We were at the beach near the end of the summer.
You were standing at the water’s edge, staring out at the waves.
Just as you turned back and saw me, you broke into a beautiful smile and I snapped your picture.
You’ve told me more than once that you knew you loved me and wanted to marry me from that very first summer.
If you had said that back then, it might have scared me off because I was falling in love with you, too, and it disoriented me.
You were funny and cute and the sex was amazing.
I had never felt like this with any other guy.
But I was about to go back to the West Coast, so maybe this would just be a summer thing.
Then, back at school in the middle of the semester, I opened the door and there you were.
You had left school and driven all the way across the country because you needed me.
And that was when I knew I needed you, too.
Since those pictures from that first summer fell out of the album, I’ve looked at them a bunch.
They draw me back to those people we used to be—just kids, really, with no idea how hard and complicated life can get.
With a hug,
Emily