Dear Brother, You Loved Me Too Late novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Declined
The letter was one page, on thick cream paper with a hospital crest at the top.
It was dated five weeks after her mother's funeral.
Dear Mr. Boswell, it began.
Angie read it out loud, because Clover asked, and because she needed to hear it in her own voice.
"Following the loss of your wife, I am writing to urge you to arrange genetic counseling for your children. Your wife carried a hereditary form of stomach cancer. Your first wife died of the same disease, and both women came from a community where this change is known."
Her voice did not shake.
It had gone somewhere far past shaking.
"Your son, Colin, is five, and has a fifty percent chance of carrying his mother's change. Your daughter is five weeks old, and has a fifty percent chance of carrying hers. Testing can wait until they are older, but they must be tested. This cancer is silent until it is advanced. Screening from the age of eighteen, or removal of the stomach before it develops, can prevent what happened to both your wives."
She stopped.
"Is there more?" Dixon asked.
"A signature. And a note."
Across the bottom of the page, in blue ink, was a line of heavy handwriting.
She knew it at once, because it had signed every report card she had ever brought home.
No. The children are healthy. Do not contact this office again.
"He wrote that," Clover said. "On the letter. And mailed it back."
"No," the housekeeper said. "He kept it. He put it in the folder with her chart, and he put the folder in the safe. He has taken it out on her birthday for nineteen years."
"He read it every year," Angie said.
"Yes."
"And did nothing."
"Yes."
Angie laid the page down very gently on top of the other pages and squared the edges.
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