It was impossibly small.
My hands began shaking.
“I thought if I saw any of this again, I would fall apart.”
“I know.”
“That’s what you were doing in the garage every birthday?”
David nodded.
“I wrote Hannah another letter.”
“What did you write?”
“Everything I wished we were brave enough to tell her.”
I looked at him.
“You should have made me tell her.”
His expression hardened.
“I tried.”
“No. You asked me.”
“Helen, you know I tried.”
“You brought it up and then accepted no.”
“What was I supposed to do? Tell our daughter behind your back?”
I looked at him.
“Maybe.”
The word surprised both of us.
Then I started crying.
“Maybe someone should have.”
Hannah returned two days later.
She barely spoke to either of us.
She carried the wooden chest upstairs to her room.
For three days, she read David’s letters.
Not all at once.
A few at a time.
Sometimes she came downstairs with swollen eyes.
Sometimes angry.
Sometimes completely silent.
