Chapter 12: The Letter

I did not leave the house that day.

I told myself it was for Poppy.

She followed me from room to room with her rabbit, asking about everything.

Did bees have mothers?

Could a person sing and hold a spoon at the same time?

Why did the fountain have a fish with no body?

At bedtime she made me promise to be there when she woke up.

"I promise," I said.

It was the first promise I'd made in four years that I thought I could keep.

I tucked her in under the pink quilt, and she was asleep before I finished the second verse.

Then I sat on the floor beside the bed with my back against the wall.

I didn't cry.

I just sat there with my heart too full to move.

Close to midnight there was a soft knock.

I opened the door to find Christian in the hall, with a hand over his mouth.

He'd been crying.

I had never seen him do it, not even in the delivery room.

"Can I come in?"

"She's asleep."

"I know. Can we talk in the hall?"

I stepped out and pulled the door nearly closed.

He held something out to me.

It was the black velvet box from the safe, open.

Inside lay a yellow diamond ring on white satin, large and square, with a band as thin as a thread.

I knew it.

I had picked it from a tray in a jeweler's back room, laughing, with his chin on my head, five years ago.

"I bought this," he said. "Didn't I."

"Yes."

"I asked you."

"Not quite. You got as far as the kitchen floor and then the phone rang."

He laughed once, a short wet sound.

"I opened the box tonight," he said. "I'd never touched it."

"Mother said it was a bad purchase. It sat in that safe four years and I never wondered."

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