The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [116]
“How else could I see it?”
He shook his head slowly. “Caroline, I asked you for your address. Again and again—every time I sent money. And in that final letter I simply asked you to invite me back into your life. What more could I do? Look, I know you don’t realize this, but I kept every letter you ever sent. And when you stopped writing, I felt like you’d slammed a door in my face.”
Caroline thought of her letters, all her heartfelt confessions flowing into ink on paper. She couldn’t remember anymore what she’d written: details about Phoebe’s life, her hopes and her dreams and her fears.
“Where are they?” she asked. “Where do you keep my letters?”
He looked surprised. “In my darkroom filing cabinet: bottom drawer. It’s always locked. Why?”
“I didn’t think you even read them,” Caroline said. “I felt I was writing into a void. Maybe that’s why I felt so free. Like I could say anything at all.”
David rubbed his hand on his cheek, a gesture she remembered him using when he was tired or discouraged. “I read them. At first I had to force myself, to be honest. Later, I wanted to know what was happening, even though it was painful. You gave me little glimpses of Phoebe. Little scraps from the fabric of your lives. I looked forward to that.”
She didn’t answer, remembering the satisfaction she’d felt on that rainy day, when she’d sent Phoebe upstairs with her kitten, Rain, to change out of her wet clothes while she stood in the living room, tearing his letter in four pieces, then eight, then sixteen, and dropping it like confetti in the trash. Satisfaction, and a sense of pleasure at having the matter closed. She’d felt those things, oblivious—unconcerned, even—about what David had been feeling.
“I couldn’t lose her,” she said. “I was angry with you for a long, long time, but by then I was mostly afraid that if you met her you’d take her away. That’s why I stopped writing.”
“That was never my intention.”
“You didn’t intend any of this,” Caroline answered. “But it happened anyway.”
David Henry sighed, and she imagined him in her deserted apartment, walking from room to room and realizing she was gone for good. Tell me your plans, he’d said. That’s all I ask.
“If I hadn’t taken her,” she added softly. “You might have chosen differently.”
“I didn’t stop you,” he said, meeting her gaze again. His voice was rough. “I could have. You wore a red coat that day at the memorial service. I saw you and I watched you drive away.”
Caroline felt suddenly depleted, almost faint. She did not know what she had hoped for from this night, but when she had imagined this conversation, she had not imagined this contention: his grief and anger, and her own.
“You saw me?” she said.
“I went straight to your apartment afterward. I expected you to be there.”
Caroline closed her eyes. She had been driving toward the highway, then, on her way here, to this life. She’d probably missed David Henry’s visit by minutes, an hour. How much had turned on that moment. How differently her life might have unfolded.
“You didn’t answer me,” David said, clearing his throat. “Have you been happy, Caroline? Has Phoebe? Is her health okay? Her heart?”
“Her heart’s fine,” Caroline said, thinking of the early years of constant worry over Phoebe’s health—all the trips to the doctors and dentists and cardiologists and ear, nose, and throat specialists. But she had grown up; she was well; she shot baskets in the driveway and loved to dance. “The books I read when she was still small predicted she’d be dead by now, but she’s fine. She was lucky, I guess; she never had a problem with her heart. She loves to sing. She has a cat named Rain. She’s learning how to weave. That’s where she is right now. At home. Weaving.” Caroline shook her head. “She goes to school. Public school, with all the other kids. I had to fight like hell for them to take her. And now she’s nearly grown I don’t know what will happen. I have a good job. I work part-time in an internal medicine clinic at the hospital. My husband—he travels a lot. Phoebe goes to a group home each day. She