Linda sat beside me.
I remembered the dress I was wearing.
I remembered the popsicle.
I did not remember the house.
My chest tightened.
Linda’s letter continued.
Your mother was my friend.
Not my closest friend, but the kind of friend who arrived when closeness stopped mattering and need became more important.
Your mother saved this house.
More accurately, she saved us.
Frank wanted to sell after she disappeared because he hated owing someone he could no longer find.
I convinced him not to.
I told him one day we’d make it right.
I wish I had lived long enough to do that myself.
I sat back.
“This is insane.”
Mr. Delgado gave me a sympathetic look.
“There’s more.”
Of course there was.
Frank’s letter continued.
“I recognized your last name the first time we met.”
That sentence hurt more than everything else.
I whispered, “No.”
Mr. Delgado looked away.
Frank and I had met at a charity dinner.
He was 63.
I was 45.
We ended up seated beside each other because two people canceled.
He made a terrible joke about dry chicken.
I laughed.
Three months later, we were dating.
I had believed it was chance.
Frank wrote:
“When you introduced yourself as Patricia, I wondered if you were June’s daughter.”
“Then you mentioned where you grew up.”
“I knew.”
“I should have told you that night.”
“Instead, I panicked.”
“By then, your mother had been dead for six years.”
“Linda was gone for three.”
“I had spent decades carrying an unpaid debt, and suddenly the daughter of the woman I owed was sitting beside me laughing at my stupid joke.”
“I told myself I’d explain after dinner.”
“Then after our second date.”
“Then after I knew you better.”
“Then I fell in love with you.”
“And the truth became harder.”
I put the letter down.
“No.”
Mr. Delgado stayed silent.
Anger started rising.
Not because Frank knew my mother.
Because he married me without telling me.
“Did he marry me because of the debt?”
Mr. Delgado answered carefully.
“I can’t tell you what Frank felt.”
I looked back at the letter.
Apparently Frank knew I would ask.
“No, Pat.”
“I did not marry you because of what I owed June.”
“If anything, the debt nearly made me walk away from you.”
“I was ashamed.”
But I loved you.
“I loved that you read the final page of mystery novels first and then lied about it.”
