Chapter 9: What He Told Her

Greta didn't answer him.

She untied her apron, folded it into a square, and set it on the table beside the lefse.

"I will say one thing tonight," she said. "I wanted to see who you were when you thought you were unobserved."

"You watched me."

"I did. And I am more proud of you than I have ever been in my life, and more ashamed of myself."

She turned to me.

"Forgive an old woman, Matilda. I'm going to bed."

She went out with her cane tapping.

Anders stood looking at the swinging door for a long time.

Then he put his hand in his pocket, took out his phone, and held it out to me.

"All of it," he said. "Read it."

"You don't have to."

"I do."

I sat down on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, because the chairs felt too formal for it.

He sat down across from me, with his knees up, and watched me read.

It began in July.

Hello, husband, she had written. I hope you don't mind the word.

He had answered four hours later, stiff as a legal brief.

I don't mind it. I'd like to understand it.

I scrolled for a long time.

I read his dry jokes, and the wrong replies they'd got, and the pictures of the lake at night.

Somewhere in August he began to write at three in the morning, in long unpunctuated blocks.

My father went off the foredeck of our launch the summer I turned seventeen.

I had the wheel.

A freighter's wake came across the bow and I turned away from it instead of into it.

By the time I cut the engine he was fifty yards back in the water.

They said no one could have done it faster. I have turned fast ever since.

I stopped reading.

I read the next line.

It wasn't your fault, Blair had written, as me. I'm so sorry. I'm here.

Four words, and the right ones.

I put the phone face down on my knee.

"She said the right thing," I said. "I'd have said it too. That's what makes my stomach turn."

"What would you have said instead?"

I thought about it.

"I'd have asked if you've driven the launch since."

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