“She stopped bringing me his pictures,” her mother said.
“Stopped asking about him. I thought she was getting better.”
“She was trying not to upset you.”
“Yes.”
A cry interrupted us.
I went into the nursery and lifted our smaller daughter against my chest. She settled almost immediately.
Her sister slept nearby, one fist resting beside her cheek.
Neither knew what had happened at the hospital.
Someday, they’d ask.
I feared that conversation more than anything.
When I returned, their grandmother was studying a photograph on the refrigerator.
Mary was laughing, holding tiny shoes she’d bought before discovering we were having twins.
“She was so happy,” her mother whispered.
“She was.”
Her eyes lowered.
“Before your wedding, Mary finally told me what that night had done to her.”
“Did you apologize?”
“Of course.”
“Did she forgive you?”
“She said she knew I loved her. She just wished she’d known it when she was little.”
I sat down.
“When she became pregnant, she brought it up again,” her mother continued. “She said she couldn’t bear the thought of her girls feeling unwanted if anything happened.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I promised I’d be there. Whatever happened.”
I stared at the envelope.
“And then you disappeared.”
She flinched.
“Yes.”
Suddenly, I remembered something.
A few weeks before delivery, Mary and I had been lying in bed. One baby kicked hard enough to make her stomach move visibly.
I’d laughed.
Mary hadn’t.
“If something happened to me, would you ever wish we’d never had them?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Please. Just answer.”
“Of course not.”
“Even if you missed me?”
I’d turned toward her.
“I’d miss you every day. But I’d still love them every day.”
She began crying.
I kissed her forehead, told her she was exhausted, and promised everything would be fine.
I’d assumed pregnancy anxiety was responsible.
Now I understood.
“She asked me something,” I told her mother.
I described our conversation.
She stared at me.
“She asked you that?”
“Yes.”
“And you told her you’d still want them?”
“Of course.”
Her hand covered her mouth.
“That’s what I should have told her when she was eight.”
I looked toward the nursery.
“She never told me why she asked.”
“She was going to. After the girls came.”
“Why wait?”
“She was ashamed that one unanswered question still frightened her.”
“She didn’t need to be ashamed with me.”
“I know.”
For a moment, I felt angry with Mary.
Not for choosing our daughters, but for hiding that pain when I’d been beside her.
Then I remembered her tears.
Perhaps she’d tried to explain, and I’d been too busy reassuring her to listen.
Her mother slid the envelope toward me.
“She wrote this for me. She said I could show you if anything ever happened to her. I couldn’t bring myself to do it until now.”
“What was she afraid of?”
She pushed it closer.
“Read it.”
I unfolded the paper.
Mary’s familiar handwriting filled the page, including the tiny hearts she sometimes drew above letters.
I touched it gently before reading.
“Mom,”
“I know you loved me.”
“I know that now.”
“But when I was little, I thought you would have traded every day with me to have Dad back.”
“I know you never meant that.”
“Still, I spent years trying to be quiet enough not to make you sad.”
“Now I’m going to have two daughters.”
“I already love them more than I know how to say.”
“And I’m scared.”
“Not of them.”
“Of what grief can make people believe.”
“He will love them.”
“I know that.”
“He doesn’t know how much he’s already healed in me.”
“Someday I’ll tell him.”
“I know I’m probably worrying about nothing.”
“But if something happens to me, he’ll blame himself.”
“He’ll think there was something else he should have said or done.”
“Please don’t let the girls grow up thinking their mother was someone they cost him.”
