PART 4
I closed my eyes.
“I know you’re probably listening when you shouldn’t be.”
I laughed.
“That sounds like you.”
She continued.
“I know you will miss me.”
I whispered:
“I do.”
“I know there will be days you feel guilty for laughing.”
I looked at the photograph beside me.
“But please don’t.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“Promise me you’ll keep living.”
I touched the recorder.
“I promise.”
Then she said something I had never heard before.
Something that made me understand why she had waited until my son’s wedding.
“Your boy will become a man.”
I smiled.
“He already has.”
“He will love someone.”
“He does.”
“And when that happens, don’t stand between them because you’re afraid of losing him.”
I swallowed.
“Let him go.”
I looked toward the window.
Outside, the evening sky was turning gold.
“Because if you raised him right…”
Her voice softened.
“…he won’t leave you.”
The tape clicked.
The recording ended.
I sat there for a long time.
After the wedding, my son kept the cassette.
Not me.
He put it in a small wooden box beside his wedding photographs.
The letter went there too.
The next morning, he called me.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to find Aunt Rebecca.”
I was quiet.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
He laughed softly.
“But Mom spent eleven years carrying this.”
He paused.
“I don’t want to carry it for another eleven.”
I told him where Rebecca lived.
He didn’t ask me to come.
He went alone.
Three days later, he called.
“She opened the door.”
“What happened?”
“She cried.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did she apologize?”
“Yes.”
“Did you forgive her?”
There was a long silence.
“I’m working on it.”
“That might be enough.”
He agreed.
Rebecca eventually sent my son copies of every document she had kept.
There were more than I knew existed.
The original medical report.
The altered summary.
Letters between lawyers.
And one photograph of my wife and Rebecca when they were teenagers.
On the back, my wife had written:
No matter what happens, you’re still my sister.
My son framed that photograph.
Not because it erased what Rebecca had done.
Because it reminded him that people could be both the person who hurt you and the person who once loved you.
Months passed.
My second wife stopped asking about the toolbox.
Instead, she helped me clean it.
We found old screws.
Rusty wrenches.
A broken tape measure.
And beneath the socket tray, another photograph.
My first wife was sitting on the hood of the old truck.
She was laughing.
I had forgotten that photograph existed.
My second wife looked at it.
“She was beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“She still is.”
I looked at her.
She smiled.
“You should keep it.”
I put it in my wallet.
Not because I was living in the past.
Because the past had helped build the man I was.
One Comment on “PART 4”