He backed away from her. “My mother.”
Shock registered on her face. “Seriously?” she whispered.
“Seriously. Got it at the reading of her will.” He crossed his ankle over his knee and shifted in the chair. “I keep it with me. Keeps me grounded.”
“What’s it say? The letter, I mean.”
“As you pointed out, it’s unopened. Which indicates, Watson, that I don’t know what it says.”
She glanced up then. “Why haven’t you opened it?”
“Don’t want to know what it says.” He leaned back, dangling his arm across the back of the chair on the other side of him.
“Why?” Her brown eyes were genuinely curious.
“Doesn’t matter what the letter says. Most likely it’s a final diatribe of how I screwed up my life. Mom kicked me out, and I didn’t see her for over a year before she passed. The last thing she said to me on the phone was that I needed to quit pissing my life away. Not in those exact words, but you get the idea. The conversation involved a lot of yelling. I don’t need a written reminder of how disappointing I was to her.”
“Why do you keep it with you?” Those eyes. Hell.
“That’s a good question. It’s also the third part to your original one-part question, which you didn’t declare when you originally asked,” he deflected.
“You answering it?”
“I’ll answer if I get the next question. And you actually have to answer. No dodging this time.”
She nodded.
He shrugged. “I confess it says what I need it to say.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Huh?”
“I keep the letter with me so when something happens, and I can use some advice, the letter says whatever I need it to say. It stays with me, so she stays with me. I didn’t get to say goodbye, and I don’t want to. The letter keeps things open.”
“Will. She’s gone. She wanted to tell you something. Don’t you think you owe it to her to read it?”
“She’s gone. She said all she needed to say when she was alive. Some things are best left alone. I was a disappointment as a son, and I don’t need that in my life now. I’ve worked hard to put that guy behind me.”
“You should open it,” she insisted.
“Let it go. You wanted to know. Now you know.”
“You were never a bad person.” She was doing the quiet thing again.
“You’ll never know who I was. Thank God for that.”
Her face changed. It was soft before, but it gentled further, and she opened her mouth to say something.
He, however, was done with this conversation. “My turn. Why’d you disappear at the barn last night?”
Her gaze drifted to her coffee. “I confess…I needed air.”
He rested his elbows on his knees. “That’s the best you can come up with?”
“We got separated, and I needed air.”
He locked his gaze on hers. “Seriously, that’s the best you can come up with?”
“Stop saying that.” She tucked a hunk of hair behind her ear.
