Grant, I don’t know if you are alive. I don’t know if your mother told you the truth, or if I’ve been a fool all these years, believing you really did care about me. This will be my last letter. I am still here. Same porch. Same address. Hannah is grown and wonderful and she knows everything I know. If you ever wondered, I never stopped waiting. Not once. Not for a single year. I was rising from the floor before I even thought about what I was doing. I’ve been a fool all these years, believing you really did care about me. I typed the return address on the envelopes into my phone.
Then I stuffed the letters back into the hatbox and carried it out to the truck with me. I set it down on the passenger seat. “I’m coming, Vivian,” I whispered as I started my truck. The drive to Asheville took four hours and felt like four decades. I rehearsed what I would say at every rest stop
and forgot it again before I merged back onto the highway. “I’m coming, Vivian,” What does a man tell a woman he last kissed when gas was a dollar a gallon? Part of me hoped she would not be there. Part of me hoped she had built something good without me, so I could hate my mother properly and go home. The other part, the loudest part, just wanted to see her face one more time. I pulled up to a modest house with a wooden porch and a row of marigolds along the walk. My hands would not let go of the steering wheel. I sat there ten minutes before I made myself walk up those three steps. I could hate my mother properly and go home.
The woman who opened the door froze me where I stood.
For one impossible second I thought it was her. The eyes. The shape of the mouth.
Then the second passed, and I saw she was younger.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“My name is Grant,” I said. “I’m looking for Vivian. Are you… Hannah?”
Her hand tightened on the doorframe.
For one impossible second I thought it was her.
Her eyes filled with tears and she nodded.
Then she stepped back. “You should come in.”
I held the hatbox against my chest like a shield as I walked into the living room. “I found all her letters earlier today. I never knew about them. Or you. My mother didn’t tell me anything.”
Hannah nodded. “She always wondered… it’s such a shame you didn’t find them earlier. It might be too late now.”
I almost dropped the hatbox. “What do you mean?”
“It might be too late now.”
“Mom had a stroke two months ago,” Hannah said. “Her memory comes and goes. Mostly goes. Some days she knows me. Some days she calls me by her sister’s name.”
I lowered myself onto the arm of a chair. I couldn’t believe it.
My mother had robbed me of a chance to be with Vivian and raise my daughter, and now, when I finally uncovered the truth, it was too late.
Hannah looked at me a long time. “She still asks for you, though. Even on the bad days. I’ll take you back to see her, but I need you to promise me something first.”
“Her memory comes and goes.”
“Okay.”
“She might not know who you are at first. She might not know you at all. Please don’t be hurt by that. And promise you won’t make a scene if she doesn’t recognize you. She gets frightened.”
“I won’t.”
“And Grant.” Her voice softened for the first time. “Whatever you came here to say, say it gently. She has been waiting a very long time, even when she didn’t remember she was waiting.”
I stood up and tucked the hatbox under my arm.
“She gets frightened.”
Hannah turned and started down the narrow hallway, and I followed my daughter toward the room where the woman I had loved for thirty-three years sat waiting for a man she might no longer recognize.
I knelt beside her chair. Vivian stared past me at the bird feeder outside the window.
“It’s me, Viv. Grant. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you, but I’m here now. I came the moment I found out where you were.”
Vivian turned to look at me.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.”
“Grant? You came…”
“I did.” My voice broke. “I wish I’d found you sooner. I never married, Viv. Never even got close. I always loved you. I never let you go.”
Vivian smiled dreamily and patted my hand. “I knew your mother was lying.”
I took her hand between mine and just sat there for a while, my mind whirling.
When I left a few hours later, I had made a decision. My mother had buried the most important part of my life and, dead or not, her betrayal had to be exposed.
“I never let you go.”
I brought the hatbox to dinner at my cousin’s house that Sunday.
The whole family was there when I laid the letters on the table and told them what my mother had done.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Finally, my aunt Carol picked up one of Vivian’s Christmas cards. “My God, Eleanor did this?”
“She did. I’m moving to Asheville next month. I’m going to do my best to make up for the years she stole from me and my family.”
“My God, Eleanor did this?”
A month later, I sat at Vivian’s bedside, reading a book to her.
She did not always know me, but I was learning to be okay with that.
Hannah came in carrying Vivian’s lunch. “Do you want to help her eat today?”
I nodded.
We sat there together, undeniably broken in some ways, but trying our best to become the family we were always meant to be.
I was learning to be okay with that.
