Brian looked at me.
“I should’ve given you the first one six months ago.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
I opened my envelope.
Inside were two pages written by my father.
Some of what he wrote is private.
But the important part was this:
Eight months before he died, Dad had been diagnosed with a serious heart condition.
Not the heart attack that eventually killed him.
Something else.
His doctors had warned him that it could shorten his life.
He never told Mom.
He never told me.
Instead, he wrote letters.
He admitted that he had always struggled to say emotional things directly.
He wrote about my career.
Choices he had criticized at the time.
Things he later realized
I had been right about.
He wrote about Brian.
He admitted he had judged him too harshly when we first started dating.
Then he wrote about Maddie.
I had been pregnant when Dad died.
He knew she was coming.
He wrote that he suspected my daughter would be like me.
Observant.
Careful.
Always noticing things.
He told me not to teach her to stop paying attention.
Then came the sentence that broke me.
He wrote that he had never been good at saying “I love you” in a way I could actually hear.
And he hoped I could hear it now.
Then he wrote about the house.
He said the house would take care of me if I took care of it.
That Grandma and Grandpa had built it well.
That there were still things inside it I hadn’t found.
Nothing valuable.
Just old things.
Pieces of where I came
from.
He told me to look when I was ready.
At the bottom, he signed his full name.
William Edward Marsh.
Not Dad.
His full name.
That was what he did when he wanted something to feel official.
I sat on the workbench holding those pages.
Brian sat beside me.
He didn’t try to read over my shoulder.
He didn’t ask questions.
He simply stayed there.
Finally, he asked,
“Are you okay?”
