Kate nodded. “I think so.” She held the other envelope in her hands and then looked around the room. “I think we should read Pop’s letter now, what do you all think?”
Everyone agreed.
Kate opened the envelope with trembling fingers, and read the letter aloud:
My dear children,
If you are reading this, it means my memory has taken me further than I wished to go, and I am no longer able to tell you the things I should have told you long ago. I hope you will forgive me for writing instead of saying these words out loud. I wanted them to come from the part of me that is still steady, still whole, still your father.
There is something you deserve to know. Something that shaped our family long before you were old enough to understand it, and something I have carried alone for many years. I never told your mother, and I never told any of you, because I believed it was my burden to hold so she wouldn’t have to.
I knew what your grandmother Lillian did to my business.
I knew she spoke to the captains and the marina men behind my back. I knew she questioned my work, my skill, my reliability. I knew she influenced banks and pushed people to take their boats elsewhere. She was respected in this town, and her word carried weight. It didn’t take long for the work to dry up, and I understood exactly why.
Elizabeth loved me. She believed in me. But she was tired, overwhelmed, and hurting in ways she never let anyone see.The pressure she felt came from trying to hold both her mother and me together, and that was a burden no one should have to carry.
Your grandmother’s interference wasn’t your mother’s choice. And it was never her fault.
I didn’t tell her what I knew because I wanted to protect her—from the truth, from the ugliness, from the final break it would have created between her and Lillian. She had already lost so much. She needed her mother, even if she didn’t always want to admit it. I couldn’t take that from her.
I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping the peace where I could, absorbing the blows so she didn’t feel them. Maybe that was a mistake. Or maybe it was the only way I knew how to love her.
There is something else you deserve to know.
Your grandfather, Elizabeth’s father, was a good man. A kind man. And he believed in his daughter’s marriage more than anyone else in the family did. When the two of us were very young, he gave us the money to buy Whaler’s Landing. Quietly, without fanfare, and without Lillian’s knowledge. He said he wanted Elizabeth to have something of her own, and he wanted me to have a chance to build the life I dreamed of with her.
He asked only one thing of me: take care of her. And I tried. With everything I had.
Your grandmother found out eventually. The anger she directed at him was something I had never seen before in a person. Words were said that couldn’t be unsaid. Their marriage never survived it, though he never regretted helping us. He died a few years later, and I think one of his last comforts was knowing he’d helped his daughter and grandchildren have a place to call home.
I tell you all this not to burden you, but to free you.
You come from a long line of people who loved fiercely but didn’t always know how to show it. Some made mistakes so deep they echoed through generations. Some tried to fix those mistakes quietly, without recognition. Some carried regrets they never had a chance to speak aloud.
You, my children, do not have to carry any of it.
Don’t let bitterness be your inheritance. Don’t let old wounds decide your future. Don’t let the wrongs of the past become the map you use to build your lives. Instead, love openly, give freely, help where you can, apologize when you should, and forgive, always forgive, even when forgiveness feels like the hardest thing in the world.
I was proud of you every day of your lives. I still am. Whatever you become, wherever you go, and whomever you love, you will carry the best of your mother and me with you. You are the proof that love was worth the cost.
I may forget many things as the years go on, but I will never forget that being your father was the greatest honor of my life.
With all my heart,
Pop
The room was silent except for crying. Four siblings absorbing their father's last coherent words, the revelation that he'd known about Lillian's sabotage all along.
“He knew,” Tom said, stunned. “About Lillian. He knew and never said a word.”
“To protect Mom,” Dani whispered.
“All those years of silence,” James said. “Carrying that alone. Lillian didn’t deserve his kindness.”
Kate looked at her siblings. “No, but Mom did. Mom saved for my education while we struggled. Pop knew about thesabotage and said nothing. They both carried these secrets thinking they were protecting us.”
“Or each other,” Tom said quietly. “Do you think Mom told Dad she’d been accepted to Woods Hole?”
