Chapter 8 - THE LETTERS THAT NEVER CAME
Rosa went with Elaine to Anna’s apartment the next morning.
Charles stayed with Lucy.
The apartment wasn’t wrecked. That somehow made it more disturbing.
A drawer sat slightly open. A storage box had been moved. Inside a kitchen cabinet, Rosa found an empty envelope where Anna kept emergency cash.
Elaine photographed everything before touching it.
The building manager checked the hallway camera.
Two days earlier, a man wearing a maintenance vest had entered with a key.
He carried no tools.
The manager did not recognize him.
Rosa did.
Not his name.
His face.
He had driven Vivian home from the gala.
At the hospital, Anna listened without interrupting.
Then she pointed toward her purse.
“The little brass key.”
Elaine found it in a zippered pocket.
“What does it open?”
“A box in Rosa’s closet. I moved it there when I started getting sick.”
“What’s in it?”
“Everything I couldn’t make myself throw away.”
The box held birthday cards.
Christmas letters.
Photographs of Lucy as a baby.
Each envelope was addressed to Charles Whitmore.
Some had been returned. Some bore delivery receipts.
One contained a hospital photograph of newborn Lucy wrapped in a striped blanket.
On the back, Anna had written:
She has Mom’s eyes. I thought you should know.
Charles read it standing beside Anna’s bed.
“You sent these?”
“Yes.”
“I never saw them.”
Anna looked toward the window.
“I called your office after Lucy was born. Vivian called back.”
“What did she say?”
“That you didn’t want pictures of another man’s child used to soften you up.”
Charles sat down hard.
Anna’s mouth trembled, but she kept going.
“After Daniel died, I tried again. I didn’t ask for money. I asked if we could come for Thanksgiving.”
He closed his eyes.
“Vivian told me you said there was no place for us.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
But she didn’t sound relieved.
She sounded tired.
Charles reached for her hand.
She let him touch it, but her fingers remained still.
“I should have come to you myself.”
“Yes,” Anna said.
The word was quiet. It left him nowhere to hide.
Elaine lifted one final item from the box.
A letter on Charles’s personal stationery.
His signature at the bottom.
Do not contact me again.
He stared at it.
“I didn’t write this.”
Anna watched his face.
“I needed you to say that eighteen years ago.”
Elaine turned the page toward the light.
Then she looked at Charles.
“This signature matches the one on your old annual report.”
May you like
“Of course it does.”
“No,” she said. “I mean it matches exactly.”
