“You had it.”
“Yes.”
“All this time?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you tell us it was missing?”
“I didn’t.”
Owen blinked.
“Marianne said Thomas took the seventh letter.”
“He did.”
“And?”
“He gave it to me in 2002.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“But you told us Thomas left before you came back.”
“He did.”
“Then how—”
“He placed it inside my coat pocket.”
Owen stared at her.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Mrs. Parker picked up the photograph.
“Because the letter wasn’t about why we stopped writing.”
“What was it about?”
“Something harder.”
She handed it to him.
Owen hesitated.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The letter was dated March 1975.
Thomas had written it after learning that Mrs. Parker had been offered a teaching position in another state.
He encouraged her to take it.
He wrote that he loved her.
But he also wrote that he feared they were beginning to arrange their lives around an idea of each other instead of the people they were becoming.
