Chapter 11 - WHAT LOVE HAD COST US
I read Rose’s letter twice.
She had written it six weeks before she died.
She apologized for the handwriting.
Complained about the hospital food.
Told me Nick would always pretend he wasn’t cold until someone handed him a sweater.
Then came the sentence that undid me.
Thank you for coming on Tuesdays when there was nothing in it for you.
I bent over the letter.
Nick put his hand near mine.
He didn’t touch me until I reached for him.
Martha had taken Vivian’s twenty thousand.
She had taken Rose’s ten.
And every time I worked another weekend to cover the wedding, she had asked whether I was sure we could afford to get married.
“She watched us struggle,” I said.
Nick stared at the receipt.
“Yes.”
“She suggested cheaper flowers.”
“I remember.”
“She told me asking my mother for help would be embarrassing.”
His jaw tightened.
“I remember.”
That night, we argued.
Not about Martha.
About him.
About the birthday dinner when he had asked me to ignore her.
The Christmas when she called my mother’s homemade gifts depressing.
The afternoon she told me I should take a cooking class if I expected to keep a husband.
Every time, Nick had waited until we were alone to tell me she was wrong.
Every time, I had gone back.
“I thought supporting you afterward counted,” he said.
“It counted as something. It didn’t stop anything.”
He sat on the edge of the bed.
“Do you wish you hadn’t married me?”
The question hurt because I couldn’t answer quickly.
“I wish I had known you would stand beside me before someone cut my hair off.”
He nodded once.
Then he moved to the couch that night because I asked for room.
No slammed doors.
No wounded speech.
Just room.
In the morning, he had made an appointment with a counselor.
“For me,” he said.
“If you want to come later, we can talk about that. But I need to understand why disappointing her always felt worse than hurting you.”
It wasn’t a cure.
It was a sentence I could build something on.
At noon, Elaine called.
The account listed to receive the house proceeds belonged to Martha.
But that wasn’t the most troubling part.
The proposed buyer was a company we had never heard of.
Vivian recognized its name.
Her former business manager ran it.
She had fired him three years earlier.
Caroline sent us a photograph from a recent fundraiser.
Martha stood beside that man.
His hand rested comfortably against her back.
May you like
Below the photograph, Caroline had written:
I don’t think this started with your wedding.
