Chapter Nine
Chase
The compartment, and the box itself, were bigger than I expected. I guess I'd imagined I'd find something small.
At about a foot square and a hand's width tall, the wooden box had weight to it. Enough weight that when I opened it I didn't expect to find letters.
More letters.
My heart sank. I didn't want to deal with letters. Letters were so personal. Trinkets I could handle. Everyone had trinkets. I thought of the top drawer of my dresser, now dumped into a box I'd unpack at some indeterminate point in the future.
Movie ticket stubs, a lanyard from a conference I'd enjoyed, a golf tee from the last disastrous time Violet and I had tried golfing together. No idea why, neither of us enjoyed the sport, but we’d laughed ourselves stupid in the process.
Trinkets I could handle. I didn't want letters.
I thought about calling out to the crew diligently searching the main library downstairs.
Something stopped me. The letters, still in their envelopes, were addressed to Anna at what I assumed was her childhood home in Alabama. They'd been stacked in the box in chronological order.
I opened the first and pulled out the folded sheet inside. Strongly slanted script, written in a heavy hand, addressed to Anna Marlow. I scanned to the bottom and saw they were signed by James Winters.
Double checking the postmark, I realized these were the letters he'd written when she'd dropped out of college. When she was pregnant with me. The first started simply.
Dear Anna,
Art history isn't the same without you. I think I'm going to fall asleep at least once a week for the rest of the semester. I don't know what happened with William, he won't talk about it, but he's been an ass, so I'm sure it was all his fault.
I hope you were telling the truth when you said this was only a short break. I miss you. If you don't want me to write, or don't want to write back…if it's too soon, I understand.
James
My hands shaking a little, I folded the letter, slid it back into the envelope and moved it to the bottom of the pile. I stared at the next letter before I pulled it from the envelope.
Anna,
Your aunt Janet sounds like my aunt Amelia. I'm glad you're enjoying the time with your family. I wish you'd tell me why you won't come back. I'm holding you to your promise to be here for the summer session. If not summer, definitely fall.
Everything seems slower without you. Dimmer. Not just art history.
William has been insisting that you two will get back together. Is it true? You don't have to tell me if it's too personal a question.
If you have time I want to hear more about life at home.
James
The next few letters were similar, short and mostly filled with news about school, but here and there James revealed his growing feelings for Anna. I suspected those feelings had existed long before she left school.
I'd bet James Winters had been in love with Anna when she'd still been dating his best friend.
As I moved through the stack of letters they grew longer, more heartfelt, and finally filled with his devotion to her. Her return letters were not in the box, but somewhere along the line, she must have confessed what had happened. Why she'd really left school.
Based on a few comments from James, it seemed he'd visited her, and I wondered if he'd known the truth before he'd arrived in Alabama. Either way, her pregnancy with another man's child didn't dissuade him. In one of the last letters he said,
Dearest Anna,
You have to make the right choice for yourself.
I can't make it for you and I won't pretend to try.
But know that I love you. If you want to keep your child I'll raise him as my own.
I know this is one of the hardest decisions you will ever make, and I want you to know that I'm yours, no matter what.
I wish I could make this easier for you.
I wish for a lot of things, but mostly I wish for your love and your good health.
And above all else, I wish for you to return to me as soon as you can.
Yours Always,
James
I sat there and stared at the yellowed paper in my hand, at James Winters' strong slashes of ink, and wondered. What kind of man had he been? Would he really have taken me in and raised me as his son?
I couldn't picture that life.
I was estranged from my parents. Suzanne and Henry Westbrook had adopted me, raised me, and kicked me out when I no longer fit their plans. They'd been the source of so much pain and rejection.
But if I'd been raised here in this house the oldest child of Anna and James Winters, I wouldn't have my sister.
I couldn't imagine a life without Vivi. I wouldn't want one.
I'd adored Vivi the moment Henry and Suzanne had brought her home, with her gold and platinum curls and those odd lavender eyes.
She'd attached herself to me from the first day, her tiny baby fingers wrapping around my thumb and squeezing so hard I wasn't sure I could get her to let go.
Suzanne and Henry hadn't been the affectionate type. They'd been stern, with lofty expectations, and when we failed them—as we often did—they'd treated us to icy disdain until we could earn back their love.
Not Vivi. She was reserved with strangers, but since infancy, she'd given me her whole heart. I'd given her mine in return.
No, even if Anna and James would have been the perfect parents, I still wouldn't trade my little sister for them. Not for anything.
I couldn't quite decipher the feelings in my chest. Most of my life I'd hated Anna Winters. And I had to wonder—if James would have taken me, would have married her even pregnant with another man's child, then why hadn't he?
I put the letter away, sliding it to the bottom of the pile, and scanned the next few. There was no mention of the decision she had yet to make. Only news about school, James telling her how much he missed her, that he'd sent her a gift, or flowers. One letter alluded to a visit.
The last letter in the pile, however, was not addressed to Anna in James' slashing script. It was addressed to James, and the return address was Anna's.
My hands shook as I pulled it from the envelope, trembling so hard the letter fell through my fingers and almost fluttered through the rail to the dining room below.
My heart lurching, I snatched at it, catching the edge and pulling it back. I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. I had to read it. Knowing who my mother was, knowing the background, was one thing.
Holding in my hands a letter she'd written? That was different. The paper rattled as I unfolded it and took in her looping messy scrawl. Not yet a doctor and already she had the requisite awful handwriting.
James,
I love you all the more for your understanding. For your acceptance. I'll never be able to tell you how much it means. Yet, it doesn't do a thing in helping me figure out what to do.
Why is that? Knowing that you love me anyway, that you'll take me with or without this child, should make everything easy. It only makes it harder.
I know that you mean it. I know that you love me, and you would love this child. But what kind of home can we give him now? We're so young. You have years left of school, as do I.
My entire life I've been working toward one goal. One dream. If I keep this child, I don't think it will ever come true. I can't envision a future that includes both the baby and medical school. What kind of life is that for him?
Either I resent him, or I abandon him to nurses and nannies. Assuming I could afford the childcare in the first place. I know you want to get married, and I want to marry you more than anything. But your parents will be furious. And if they cut us off, we won't be able to afford a child anyway.
I am selfish. I am a low, horrible, selfish person.
Because I love this baby. I do. He moves inside me, and I feel his kicks, and I want to know him.
I want to hold him in my arms, to kiss him, to teach him to walk, and ride a bike, to read him stories.
And if I choose that future, I give up all of my dreams. I don't think I can do that.
I want children. I want to be a mother. But not right now. I have two paths in front of me, and I cannot follow them both. I know whatever I choose I will regret it for the rest of my life.
All my love,
Anna
This letter, I returned to its envelope and slid in my pocket.
This letter was mine.
I couldn't process her words and what they meant. Couldn't process the rush of compassion for her pain over the choice she’d had to make.
Or the resentment that she hadn't chosen me. That she'd chosen her career. That she'd chosen her dreams and forgone any hope of ever knowing mine.
There was no mention of William Davis in any of the letters, aside from James' brief comments that he hadn't taken their breakup well. I'd wondered if Anna and James had sent me away because they'd been worried about Davis.
That didn't quite make sense, knowing they'd remained friends with him until his obsession with Anna had gotten them killed.
I set the stack of letters from James to Anna aside and felt along the bottom of the box.
It was lined with black velvet, but there was something else there, a dark envelope that almost disappeared against the fabric.
I hooked a fingernail under the edge and pulled.
I hadn't seen one of these in almost 20 years. An envelope of photographs, with the name of the drugstore where they'd been processed—long out of business—printed on the back. I shook the photographs into my hand and sucked in a breath of shock.
I blinked hard at the moisture prickling the back of my eyes.
The face looking at me was so like my own, so like Vance and Annalise, and even Gage, who I'd heard resembled his father.
A young Anna Marlow, lounging on the grass in a courtyard at what I guessed was Emory University, she was identical to pictures I'd seen of Annalise at the same age.