Chapter Two
As soon as the kids are asleep, their bellies filled with unexpected dishes of ice cream and Lakshmi’s macaroni and cheese, Diana carries a bottle of wine and a glass into the living room. In the dark, she sits on the floor against the sofa.
She considers calling her sister to tell her about the letter, maybe even have Andrea come over while she reads it, but if she does that, the focus will shift from what Diana needs to what her sister wants her to do.
Her parents will react similarly. This letter is for Diana; she has to read it on her own.
A list starts up: What Did Tom Do That’s So Bad He Left Me This Letter? Inside her sweatshirt pocket, she runs her fingers along the envelope, stopping when she comes to the hastily torn opening.
Diana started making lists as a kid. She pitched Why Should My Bedtime Be Later?
to her father at age seven. He laughed and gave her fifteen more minutes.
She presented What Makes Me the Better Daughter?
to her parents in high school after they caught her sister sneaking out to meet a boy.
Her parents had been amused by that one; her sister, not so much.
Her list-making continued during college, waning after graduation, as her adult life began to take shape, and it’s only now, at forty-three, that the lists have reappeared.
They are meant to offer the answer to a question, but occasionally, Diana’s grief co-opts her lists into something else, something revealing, something she tries hard not to see.
Did he drive drunk and cause an accident?
Was it a hit-and-run?
Did he intentionally hurt someone?
The branches on the tree in her front yard slap against the house as the wind picks up.
Diana and Tom met on a blustery night like this one, a storm in the forecast. She was at a bar on Boylston Street with coworkers from the Boston Public Library, drinking margaritas and shooting pool.
After her second drink, the tequila tiring her out, Diana said her goodbyes.
As she came out of the restroom, coat in hand, calculating how often the subway ran at that time of night, she found him waiting.
“You’re going? Right when I got the courage to talk to you?
” Leaning against the wall, wearing a red tie and a blue shirt that matched his eyes, he had his arms crossed at his chest, and his mouth was turned up at the corners in a hesitant smile.
Tom had a beard then, and when she looked at him, his smile grew and he stepped forward.
She remembered inhaling, and his scent—the crisp, grassy smell of the moment before snow fell—filled her head, all the blood rushing to her toes, leaving her skin tingling.
He said later he noticed her when she walked through the door.
He hoped she would step away from her group so he could say hello.
This confession came after they’d been dating for three months.
She made a crack that maybe he was a stalker, but he didn’t laugh.
“I knew you were special,” he said, and she kissed him.
That night in the bar, she almost turned away from Tom, from their future together, but a quiet and insistent hunch made her push through her sleepiness to stay.
He bought them a round of margaritas and told her about his job at a prestigious law firm and his dream to go out on his own.
She sipped her cocktail and noticed the way his hair curled around his ears.
She wanted to run her fingers through those curls and rub her cheek against his beard, the hairs tickling her skin, slowly at first and then harder.
She wanted to inhale the scent of him again.
When Tom asked about her life, Diana entertained him with stories about the library’s patrons and shared her dream of earning her PhD in library sciences and working at, or perhaps even leading, a grand library like the ones she’d visited during a vacation to England.
He listened carefully, asking such smart and thoughtful questions she forgot they’d just met.
And then there was Tom’s laugh: the way his eyes lit up when he found something funny, the way he clutched his stomach when the joke was exceptional, the musicality of his unexpected giggle.
She fell for him that night, though it would be a while before she realized it.
They talked until the overworked bartenders kicked them out.
Not ready for the night to end, he walked her home, the wind whipping around them on the empty Boston streets.
It was a magical, chance meeting, and every anniversary, Tom made them margaritas to summon up that first night when they found each other.
It’s time to read this letter, Diana thinks.
Shifting up onto the sofa, she leans over to the side table and turns on the lamp.
The red liquid in her glass glints in the pale light.
She takes a large swig of her wine—a pinotage, Tom’s favorite—and places the empty glass on the table.
As the wine seeps through her body, Diana rubs her hands over her face. I can do this.
She removes the envelope from her pocket. He wrote her name as if in a rush, the letters crooked, the envelope dented with the marks of his pen. She pulls out the letter and begins to read, starting with the first line in case she misunderstood the words earlier.
Dear Diana,
If you’ve found this letter, I’m gone. I shouldn’t say “if,” as it’s clear there’s no miraculous recovery for me waiting around the corner. I am so sorry for leaving you and the kids.
I’m also sorry for something else, something I’ve never told you.
I should have accepted responsibility a long time ago, before I met you.
Maybe if I tell you now, it will be enough.
It’s also possible I’m making things worse for you by writing this letter, but I owe it to you to tell you the kind of man I really was.
When I was 18 years old, I did something criminal. Something so terrible I can’t even write the details here.
People died. It’s all my fault.
I never owned up to what I did, a decision that was another mistake.
Others know about my past. After my death, around the time you find this letter, when I hope you’ve moved on from me, they may come into your life. Don’t let them in. Keep them away from Duncan and Phoebe.
If we had been different people, or maybe if our relationship had been different, I might have told you all this sooner.
I tried, but I wasn’t sure how you’d react.
Would you have been disappointed in me? Or angry?
How could you trust me for lying to you for our entire relationship?
For so long, I blamed you for my inability to come clean.
I saw you as the obstacle to being truthful when it clearly was me. I’m sorry for so much.
Perhaps this cancer is the universe fixing my wrongs. If it is, I understand, though I wish leaving you was not the debt I had to pay.
When you speak of me to Duncan and Phoebe, tell them their father was imperfect, but he loved them, and you, more than anything.
Tom
By the third paragraph, Diana stops breathing. At the end, she finds herself lightheaded, choking for air.
I hope you’ve moved on from me.
I blamed you.
I’m sorry.
She turns over the page and examines the envelope again. This is definitely Tom’s handwriting. He wrote this letter, though the tone of it is odd, as if he anticipated the words would be dissected and analyzed.
An idea comes to her, and Diana is up, running into the kitchen, the letter clutched in her hand.
She grabs the time capsule from the top of the toaster oven and dumps the contents onto the black granite countertop.
She haphazardly pushes the items apart, almost ripping Phoebe’s drawing in half with her frenzied movements.
Everything is there: Tom’s interview, the newspaper, the apple-picking photograph.
All the other items are from 2012, when they assembled the time capsule.
Except this letter. It’s from a different time, likely right before Tom’s death in 2014.
A surge of nausea, all that wine acidic and angry, roiling in her gut, makes Diana briefly think she will vomit all over the kitchen floor. She squeezes her eyes shut and presses her fingers into her temple.
“Go back to the beginning,” she says, as if it’s that easy.
With her belly pressed against the counter, Diana recreates finding the time capsule. She sees Phoebe run in from the office with it in her hands. She remembers sitting at the table with the kids as Phoebe opened the envelope.
That’s when Diana remembers an important detail: Phoebe labored over the time capsule’s clasp, not its seal. The adhesive was untouched. It could have been possible, therefore, to add a letter . . . later.
“Some love letter this is. What happened?” she pants. “Why doesn’t he explain what he did?”
Diana shuffles again through the time capsule’s contents, her brisk movements turning the papers and photographs into a disorienting, dizzying blur.
She imagines the panic she’s feeling is similar to what it’s like to drown, or to get caught in a tornado: everything swirling around, nothing to hold on to.
Whatever Tom’s cryptic message is, she is sure of one thing: It is indeed a disaster, a man-made storm violently barreling into her life, seconds away from splintering her to pieces.