I asked her why she had come.
She said Douglas had been asking questions.
She said the truth would not stay buried forever.
My mother’s handwriting slanted sharply downward across the page.
She gave me the letters and asked me to keep them until I was certain you could bear them. I refused. I told her I had already done enough damage.
She left them with me anyway.
They are at the lake cottage.
My breath stopped.
The letters in Douglas’s box were not the only letters.
My mother had known about the cottage. She had known Douglas’s mother kept them there. And she had kept that knowledge from me for nearly thirty years.
At the bottom of the page, she had written:
There is one more thing.
The night before Douglas left for college, your father went to the train station. He spoke to Douglas alone.
