Chapter 14 - LORETTA’S LETTERNine months after the wedding, a letter arrived.
Loretta.
I almost threw it away.
Then I opened it.
The first sentence was:
I owe you an apology without an explanation.
Good beginning.
She wrote that she had left Harlon’s house for six months.
Not because of me, she emphasized.
Because our confrontation forced her to examine things she had spent forty years renaming.
Temper.
Pressure.
Marriage.
Compromise.
She wrote:
I taught my son that peace meant the woman adjusts first.
I read that line twice.
Then:
I watched Thatcher put his hands on you and measured whether it was bad enough to intervene. I understand now that the measurement itself was the failure.
That one stayed with me.
Loretta did not ask forgiveness.
She did not ask to see me.
She said Thatcher continued therapy and had moved into his own apartment rather than returning to the family estate.
She said Harlon had begun counseling too, though she did not know whether their marriage would survive.
Then the last line:
What you did in that room was defend yourself. What I did was defend a system.
I folded the letter.
My father asked whether I planned to answer.
“No.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t think I should?”
He shrugged.
“Not my letter.”
I laughed.
He was getting almost irritatingly good at this.
I put Loretta’s letter in a desk drawer.
Not forgiveness.
Not evidence.
History.
Maybe one day I would answer.
May you like
Maybe not.
For once, the uncertainty belonged entirely to me.
