Then saw the photographs of Joan.
His mother.
He walked toward them.
“Why are these here?”
“Because your father loved her.”
Peter turned toward me.
I meant it.
“He didn’t erase your mother to marry me.”
Anne started crying.
She walked to a photograph of Joan holding a newborn.
“That’s me.”
I stood beside her.
“You look furious.”
“My mother said I screamed for four months.”
“She sounds trustworthy.”
Anne laughed through tears.
Then Peter noticed the letters.
“What are those?”
I hesitated.
Some truth belonged to Walter’s children too.
So I told them.
Not every intimate sentence.
Enough.
Their grandmother.
The intercepted letters.
The confession.
Walter learning the truth in 1998.
Peter sat down.
“He knew?”
“Yes.”
“While Mom was alive?”
“Yes.”
“And he never contacted you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I handed him Walter’s unsent letter.
He read the section about Joan sleeping upstairs.
His face changed.
He read:
Joan deserves a husband who lives in the life he chose with her.
