“Like you, I had put it out of my mind. You’re not the only one who forgot about this. Maybe neither of us was ready to dwell upon what these letters might hold.”
“I’m ready now,” Lauren said quietly. “Thank you.”
The next few minutes blurred. Aunt Beryl gave her one more not-quite-kiss to the cheek, and Elsa and Ivy hugged her tightly before Lauren retreated to the privacy of her room.
Her nerves tremored. Dropping her handbag on the nightstand, she kicked off her shoes and curled her legs beneath her on the quilted bed. The box felt surprisingly light on her lap for the weight of what it held.
At last, she opened the lid and pulled out an envelope at random. Mother had written this one to Dad in September 1902. Lauren would have been almost ten years old at the time, her mother thirty-seven, and her father forty-seven.
My sister has asked me a thousand times if it was worth it to marry you, and a thousand times, I tell her yes, it was worth it. For Lauren. I struggle to understand why you stay away from her. I don’t doubt that your love for me has faded. I have lost my shine, no longer bearing any resemblance to my name, and I know it began even before I got sick.
What I can’t understand is why you choose Egypt over Lauren, too. We have been through so much to have this child. She is brilliant when you are near, but you don’t see how she flattens every time you leave. I am not enough for her, Lawrence, nor did I ever expect to be. She needs her father, too. Will you not come home before her birthday this year? Be here for Christmas at least?
I worry for her. When nurses and doctors come to see me, she stays in your office. She is not afraid of strangers, Lawrence. She is hiding from the truth that her mother is dying. You run to Egypt. She runs to the idea of it. It’s where she feels safe. She is more like you than you realize. I’m losing both of you to the ancient past because you don’t like the present and future.
A tear slipped to the tip of Lauren’s nose, and she caught it with the side of her finger. Every paragraph prompted a new question in her mind. Her eyes hot and sticky, she read the letter again, and then a third time, trying to decipher the code.
Two things, at least, were clear. Nancy had been right in that Mother had understood more than Lauren had realized. And Lauren had work to do if she was ever going to grasp the full picture herself.
Swiping the back of her hand over her cheek, she drifted to the living room.
“Aunt Beryl?” Lauren lifted the letter. “Can we talk?”
At once, her aunt rose and followed her back to her room, where Lauren sat on the end of her bed, and Aunt Beryl perched on the skirted stool at the vanity.
“You have questions,” her aunt said quietly, brushing Cleo’s hair from her skirt.
“Three of them, actually, and all from reading only one letter.” Lauren spread the looping script over her lap. “Mother said in September 1902 that she’d started to lose her shine even before she got sick. Then she says that she and my father went ‘through so much’ to have a child, and in the next paragraph implies that Dad was running away from something when he went to Egypt. Can you shed light on any of this?”
Aunt Beryl’s spine seemed to soften by a degree. “The babies. Of course, Goldie was talking about the babies. That’s your answer to all three questions.”
Lauren shook her head, failing to comprehend.
Her aunt gazed at the photograph of Mother on the vanity. She picked up the frame. “My sister had trouble carrying babies to term. Before you were born, she suffered three miscarriages.”
Lauren trapped the groan in her spirit, pressing a hand to the ache in her heart.
“Each baby that died took a little more of Goldie. The fourth baby was born twenty months before you. He was nearly full-term. I was there for that birth. I was there when my sister’s perfect, tiny baby boy died three days later in her arms.”
The pain became a fire in Lauren’s chest. Four babies, four different sets of hopes and dreams wrapped in the most precious form. Four losses to grieve, with little time to heal between. Tears soaked the handkerchief balled in her fist.
“Shall I stop?” her aunt asked.
“No,” Lauren rasped. “Tell me more. Tell me the truth.”
“Your brother’s name was Lawrence. Your father, for whom the child was named, never saw him. Can you imagine?” Aunt Beryl’s voice shook with anger. “The man was off digging somewhere and never held his own son. He wasn’t there to hold his wife after the death, the most devastating blow of all. Just like he wasn’t there to comfort you when Goldie followed her little boys to heaven, at last.”
Lauren squeezed shut her eyes, inhaled deeply, then exhaled. Again. “Why didn’t they tell me?” she whispered.
The mattress squeaked, and Lauren opened her eyes to find her aunt sitting beside her.
“Your father made Goldie promise not to. It was too unpleasant, he said. He didn’t even want to name the babies who came before Lawrence. But Goldie named them. William. Matthew. Isaac. And then Lawrence.”
Four brothers in heaven. It was staggering.
“May I?” Aunt Beryl touched the letter, and Lauren passed it to her.
Quiet pulsed while she silently read. “‘You run to Egypt,’” she read aloud at last. “That’s what he did, Lauren, though it gives me no pleasure to say it. Yes, it was his work. But it became a convenient obsession. He didn’t want to face his wife’s grief, or perhaps his own, at home. Then once she became ill, there was even more to run from, of course. He couldn’t stand to witness her decline.”
