“I knew there was something,” he said. “I didn’t know what. I didn’t ask. Raymond was my brother. I loved him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t my business.”
“It was my business.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was. And I’m sorry you’re finding out about it now. I’m sorry you’re finding out about it at all. But I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know anything. And even if I did, Raymond isn’t here to speak for himself.”
I wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to shout at him for protecting his brother, for looking the other way, for being part of the silence that had surrounded me for forty-three years.
But I wasn’t angry. I was tired.
I drove home that afternoon in silence. No radio. No audiobook. Just the sound of the tires on the highway and the wind through the cracked window and my own breathing.
Harold called me the next day to make sure I got home safe. We did not mention Gloria. We have never mentioned her since.
—
The fourth thing I never told anyone is the hardest one.
I almost burned the letters.
It was a Sunday afternoon, about a year after I found them. I was in the backyard, burning leaves and branches that had come down in a storm. The burn barrel was old and rusted and had belonged to Raymond’s father. I had used it a hundred times.
I went upstairs to the attic. I took my mother’s suitcase out of the corner. I opened it. The shoe box was still there, taped shut exactly as I had left it.
I carried it downstairs. I walked out to the backyard. The burn barrel was still smoldering from the leaves I had put in an hour ago.
I stood there with the box in my hands.
This would be so easy, I thought. Drop it in. Watch it burn. Never think about it again.
But that was a lie, and I knew it. I would think about it. I would think about it every day for the rest of my life. I would wonder what the other nine letters said. I would wonder if burning them meant I was hiding from the truth or protecting myself from it.
I could not tell the difference anymore.
I carried the box back inside. I put it on the kitchen counter. I stared at it for a long time.
Then I took a knife and cut the tape.
—
I read all eleven letters that afternoon. Every single one. In order.
The first one was dated April 12, 1978. Raymond and I had met six months earlier. We were not married yet. The letter was short, barely a page, and it was about a party. A party I had not attended because I had been sick with the flu. Gloria had gone instead, because she and Raymond had mutual friends, and she wrote about how they had ended up talking on the porch for two hours while everyone else was inside.
I didn’t expect to like him as much as I did, she wrote. He’s not the kind of man I usually go for. He’s too quiet. But he listens, Dot. He actually listens. Do you know how rare that is?
I did know. I had known it since the night I met Raymond, when he had asked me about my teaching certification and then remembered every single thing I told him.
The second letter was dated August 3, 1979. Raymond and I had been married for three months. Gloria’s marriage to Curtis was already falling apart.
