“Wait—stop a minute.”
The men looked annoyed, but Merritt ignored them and bent to get a better view beneath the refrigerator. Screwing up her face, she stuck her hand into what looked like fifty years of dust and cooking grease that had managed to congeal beneath the appliance, trapping something on the bottom, and peeled off what appeared to be a folded piece of paper, yellowed and brittle with age. Strings and clumps of dust fell from the paper as Merritt shook it, then sneezed.
The men continued on their way back to the truck, but Merritt didn’t raise her head.
Worried by her silence, Loralee wheezed, “Whatever that is, I’m thinking it’s been stuck under the refrigerator for a long time.”
Merritt looked at her with the eyes of a child who’d just realized she was lost in an unfamiliar place. “There’s only one word written on the front. ‘Beloved.’” Her hands shook, rattling the page. “I think I recognize the handwriting.”
The rear gate slid down and clanged shut, and then the beeping sounds of the truck reversing came from the driveway, but neither one of them looked over.
Merritt collapsed into the rocking chair beside Loralee’s, then carefully unfolded the letter and began to read.
July 25, 1955
My darling Henry,
You will never see this letter; yet I feel compelled to write it. It is my farewell letter to you, the last words I will ever address to you whether or not you see them. Today our mutual misery will be over for eternity. Or at least until we meet again in the next life, wherever that will be. I will admit that I haven’t planned much further than today.
I love you, Henry. I have since the first moment I saw you. But, you see, I hate you almost as much as I love you. And I know you must feel the same way, because when I count the bones you have broken of mine, like a lover counts petals from a flower with, “He loves me; He loves me not,” I always come up with a different answer.
I cannot live with you any more than I can imagine living without you. But we have a daughter now, and it is her protection that has charted my course. I could not bear to see you lay a hand on her, and know that I was responsible for not protecting her.
My handwriting is shaky, but still legible. As you know, it’s not because of nerves—I’m quite calm now that I know that I’m going through with this. It’s because two of my fingers are numb because of nerve damage received when you slammed my hand in the car door because I didn’t exit the car fast enough for you. That was the proverbial last straw as I envisioned the tiny hand of our daughter suffering a similar fate.
It was an easy thing, especially for a bright girl who always did well in science, to make a bomb and set an alarm that would detonate after your arrival in Miami, after it is securely stowed in your trunk and you are driving away to your next adventure with your latest lover. It was an easy thing to pack it with your toothpaste and shaving cream, then place it in your suitcase, tucked in among your neatly ironed and folded clothes. Just as easy as it will be to latch your suitcase after I’ve placed this letter inside and hand it to you, then watch you stow it in the car trunk. It will be easy up until the moment I watch you drive away from me for the last time.
You are my beloved, and always will be. Forgive me.
J
Loralee stared at Merritt, wondering whether she’d ever seen skin so pale, so bloodless. “You know who wrote that?”
Slowly, Merritt nodded. “Yes,” she said, carefully folding the letter like the edges were giving her splinters. “My grandmother.”
chapter 31
EDITH
OCTOBER 1993
Edith finished the tiny stitches on the Eton tie, knotting it off by hand. It was perfect, the dimensions proportional to the real height of Henry P. Holden. She’d been to his interment, and that of that poor woman from Pittsburgh. Or was it Poughkeepsie? It had been nearly forty years, and some of the details were getting foggy. Both unclaimed victims had been buried at the same time in separate graves, at the charity of the parishioners of Saint Helena’s.