Chapter 24: Bet

I carried the cream envelope for three days without opening it.

It rode in my coat pocket on the plane back to New York, through customs, and into the back of the car.

Tommaso did not ask about it.

On the fourth night I took it out in the kitchen of the new apartment.

It was a high, bright place on the Hudson, with no closets I had to check.

He was at the counter cutting lemons for the fish.

"Do you want me to leave?" he said.

"No."

I held the envelope up to the light, and I could see the shape of two pages inside.

Russell's handwriting leaned the way it always had.

I thought about what the letter might say.

Sorry, probably, in good sentences.

Or a request, a small one, dressed up as an apology.

Or something true, which would be worse, because I might believe it.

I lit the gas on the stove.

The blue flame stood up under the pan.

Tommaso put the knife down.

"Bianca."

"He apologized in the hall," I said. "He meant it. I don't need to hear it twice."

"You may want to know what he says."

"I know what he says. He says he is sorry, and I am the only woman he ever loved, and he will never forgive himself."

"Is that what you think he wrote?"

"It's what I would have wanted him to write, three years ago," I said. "I'm not three years ago anymore."

I touched one corner of the envelope to the flame.

The paper curled and went brown.

I held it until the fire reached my fingers, and then I dropped it into the sink and watched it finish.

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