“He knew?”
“He knew enough to understand that the two families had interfered. He didn’t know your mother had written the letter. Your mother’s note and the cassette recording filled in what he was missing.”
I picked up the statement.
“Why did no one send this to me?”
Margaret looked directly at me.
“Because everyone who had the courage to tell the truth assumed someone else should be the one to do it.”
The sentence was so simple that it hurt.
I read the statement again.
At the bottom, beneath the signature, there was a handwritten addition.
I believed I was saving my son from a foolish decision. I was saving myself from admitting that I could not bear to lose him. I have been wrong for forty years.
I set the pages down.
“Does Douglas know you have this?”
“He asked me to bring it to you if you ever came to the cottage.”
