“What if I told you that I never told him about you?”
My head jerks so fast I might have whiplash. “Youwhat?”
“Well ...” She dances her fingers along the desk, dodging my gaze. “If he wasn’t going to choose us, maybe he didn’t deserve to know.”
A trapdoor opens beneath me, and I fall right through it. “Mom, no.”
“I know it wasn’t the right thing to do now, but back then?—”
I let out a loud groan.
“—I didn’t care about right and wrong. He didn’t pick me, and the only thing I could think to do was never tell him. Served him right.”
“Served him right?” It’s a struggle not to scream. “You withheld the fact I existed out of spite? Who doesn’t tell someone they have a kid?”
Her look does not need translation.
I drop my face in my hands. I don’t have the mental capacity for this. To defend myself. To slap her.
This isn’t the same thing. It isn’t. I told everyone Bennie’s dad was dead because I panicked. Because he wanted a life that didn’t involve kids. Because it was manageable.Deadis so much cleaner thandoesn’t know about youor, God forbid,didn’t want you.
“Rueben still lives in Charleston,” she says, like I asked or care. “Colleen called me this morning. She’s still in Charleston and her husband sees your dad from time to time. His health isn’t great, and I thought you should know.”
“Okay, well, Mom, now I know. And, just a reminder,yourhealth isn’t great, and we are going to lose the business. I’m sorry you have an unfinished love story or whatever this”—I wave the paper—“is. But we have more pressing issues than some man who was obsessed with a childhood fantasy.”
“There’s more.”
“More?” I let out an exasperated breath. “What the hell does that mean?”
From the box, she pulls out a rubber-banded stack of postcards and passes them to me.
“What are these?” I mindlessly riffle their edges. “Love notes with a treasure hunter?”
It sounds like she says, “They’re from Nash,” but that can’t be right.
“Who?”
“Nash,” she repeats. “He’s been sending them.”
“What?” Eyes wide, heart stopped, I yank the rubber band off and read the back of one.
Two.
Three.
More.
His handwriting, his brand of humor and preferred method of communication. Eight years ago, he refused to have a cellphone. Preferred letters and in-person conversations and loved how postcards were evidence of history in time and place. It was part of his charm. Part of what sucked me into him and made me blind to his many,manyflaws. To his inability to consider the future or take anything seriously. This can’t be right. It can’t.
“Mom?”
I expect her to saypsych!or explain how a stack of postcards from the man I loved then hated then told everyone is dead isn’t really what this is.
Instead, she says. “They’ve been coming for years. I was waiting for the right time to tell you, but I was worried you’d be mad and?—”
“Mad?” I cannot wrap my brain around any of this. “Why would I be mad at you? He’s the one who—” I pick up the postcard on top—a skyline of Philadelphia—and scoff at the note on the back:
Come and get me, Rue Conway.
