Frustration rose inside me.
“My entire childhood was built around a missing room nobody told me existed.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Margaret absorbed that quietly.
Then she said, “You’re right.”
It disarmed me.
She looked suddenly old.
“We thought we were honoring your father. Perhaps we were only helping him avoid something he couldn’t bear.”
“What?”
“I wish I knew.”
Before leaving, I asked whether Margaret had anything else belonging to Claire.
She hesitated.
Then she went upstairs.
When she returned, she carried a small wooden box.
Inside were photographs, two letters, a silver bracelet, and an old cassette tape.
“This was your father’s,” Margaret said. “He gave it to me before his final hospitalization.”
“What’s on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never listened?”
“He asked me not to.”
Stephen glanced at me.
Margaret noticed.
“I’m tired of keeping promises to the dead that hurt the living.”
She handed me the cassette.
