PART 2
I peeled the envelope from the bottom of the box and opened it with shaking hands.
“My Patricia,” it began, in Frank’s careful script.
“If you’re reading this, then I’m gone, and Delgado has done exactly what I asked. I’m sorry to make you sit in a lawyer’s office to hear from me. But there are things I need you to have, in writing, that I was too proud and too protective to say out loud while I was alive.
First: I know what they said about you. For eleven years. ‘She’s only here for the house.’
I know you heard it. I know you stopped correcting them. I know it broke something in you a little more each Thanksgiving, and I know you stayed anyway, and loved me anyway, and I am so ashamed that I never once stood up in that room and told my children the truth.
I didn’t stand up because the truth would have shamed them. And I chose their pride over your dignity, over and over, and it was the great cowardice of my life.
So I’m telling the truth now, in this box, where it can’t be argued with.
Patricia, you didn’t marry me for the house.
You saved the house.
You saved it from my own children.
And they never knew.
Open the box, my love. It’s all in there.
I’m sorry it took my death to make me brave.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Mr. Delgado slid a small brass key across the desk. “He left this with the letter.”
I opened the box.
