“He’s still alive.”
When he saw me, he went still.
“She’s gone,” Ashley said.
He nodded. He’d known.
“Tell him, Uncle Tom,” Ashley said. “Mom would’ve wanted you to.”
“I’ve been waiting thirty years to,” Thomas said, looking at me.
When he saw me, he went still.
***
He sat at his kitchen table and looked at his hands for a long time before speaking.
“Your scholarship wasn’t the only thing our father threatened,” he finally admitted. “He owned the bank that held your parents’ mortgage. He told Lily he’d ruin your future and make sure your family lost everything. He even threatened to marry her off to someone wealthier. Lily was terrified, and I helped her escape because she thought it was the only way out.”
I stared at him.
“Lily believed him.”
Thomas looked down. “Honestly, Shawn… she probably should have.”
“I helped her escape.”
Silence settled between us.
“She was seventeen,” he finally said. “She thought she was protecting you.”
“And the river?”
Thomas closed his eyes when I asked that.
“The river gave her a way out.”
“She thought she was protecting you.”
***
I sat in Thomas’s kitchen with my hands flat on the table.
I didn’t feel relieved. I didn’t feel grateful. I felt something I didn’t have a word for at first, and then I found it.
Wrecked.
Lily had loved me enough to let me grieve her. For thirty years she had carried that choice alone, and I had spent those same thirty years believing I’d been abandoned, carrying my half of a grief she’d meant as a gift.
Thomas reached into a drawer and set another envelope on the table.
