The woman glanced at the photograph. “My name is Helen.”
“How do you know my father?”
“Longer than you’ve been alive.”
“So you were together.”
Helen’s expression barely changed. “No. We never were.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You were standing beside him in 1987. Your face is scratched out. He’s been bringing women here for 18 months, and suddenly you’re sitting across from him.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Then what was it?”
Helen looked at the envelope. “Your father was asking me if eight years was long enough.” She pulled out the chair opposite me and signalled for me to sit.
“No. You can tell me standing.”
She studied me for several seconds.
Then she said, “Your mother chose every woman your father dated.”
I laughed once because the sentence was absurd.
“Mom has been dead eight years.”
“I know.”
“So try again.”
Helen opened her handbag and removed a folded sheet of yellowing paper.
She didn’t hand it to me. She placed it on the table between us.
At the top was Mom’s handwriting.
“Tom,”
“If you’re reading this, you finally ignored me long enough to open the blue box.”
My knees weakened.
I sat.
“There are more,” Helen said.
“More what?”
“Pages.”
“Where?”
“Your father has them.”
I reached for the paper.
Helen pressed her palm over the page between us.
“Rachel, your mother was sick for almost two years before you knew how serious it was.”
I remembered those months.
Mom saying she was tired. Mom refusing vacations. Mom telling me the treatment was working when it wasn’t.
By the time she admitted she was dying, we had 11 weeks.
“You knew?”
Helen nodded.
“Before Dad?”
“Before either of you.”
I pushed back from the table. “You were her doctor?”
“No.”
“Then why would she tell you?”
Helen looked at the ruined photograph.
“Because I was her best friend.”
I almost laughed again.
Mom had never mentioned a Helen.
And neither had Dad.
Not once.
“Best friends don’t scratch each other out of photographs.”
“Usually they don’t.”
I pulled the picture off the wall before she could stop me.
The frame was old, but the scratches weren’t. They cut deep across Helen’s face.
One date was written on the backing board.
On the back, in Mom’s handwriting, were five words. “Take her off the list.”
I looked at Helen.
“What list?”
She closed her eyes.
“Of women she thought your father should marry afterward.”
