PART 2
Once everyone else had filed out of that conference room, quiet and awkward in the way families get after something like that, Elias asked me to stay behind for just a moment longer.
“Actually, Marguerite,” he said, once the door had closed behind our youngest son, “your husband did leave something for you. He asked me to give you this privately, after everyone else had already heard the will read in full.”
He handed me a sealed envelope, my name written across the front in Silas’s familiar, slightly slanted handwriting.
My hands were shaking by the time I got it open.
My love, if you’re reading this, then everyone in that room now believes I left you nothing at all. That is exactly what I needed everyone to believe, at least for the length of one afternoon.
I sat down slowly in the chair Elias pulled out for me, my stomach already twisting.
You need to know the truth about something I’ve carried, quietly, for almost fifty years. I hid it from you, Marguerite, not because I didn’t trust you with it, but because I loved you too much to let it become your burden to carry alongside your own life. I did leave you something. I need you to trust me enough to keep reading, all the way to the end, before you let yourself feel anything final about any of this.
And one more thing, my love. Don’t trust my sister. Not yet. Not until you understand exactly why.
