Chapter 8 - The Letter from Danbury
Spring turned to summer with the sudden, violent green of New England June.
The estate had completely shifted its skin. The suffocating formality of Lorraine’s reign had been scrubbed from every corner: the heavy damask drapes had been replaced with unbleached linen that billowed in the warm breeze, the antique oriental rugs had been rolled up to reveal seventy-year-old pine planks that smelled of beeswax, and the front lawn was cluttered with Zaya’s red bicycle, a wooden birdhouse she had built with Travis, and two rescue mutts we had adopted from a shelter in Waterbury.
On a Tuesday afternoon, while Zaya was at her summer day camp at the nature center, a certified letter arrived from an elder-care facility in Danbury.
The envelope was plain, bearing the institutional return address of The Glen at Danbury Ridge: Assisted Living & Memory Care.
I sat on the front porch steps, the dogs panting softly at my feet, and opened the envelope with a pocketknife.
Inside was a single sheet of lined paper, written in Lorraine’s hand. But the sharp, aristocratic slant had completely deteriorated; the letters were shaky, uneven, drifting off the horizontal lines like the handwriting of a child practicing her letters in the dark.
“Travis,” the letter began, though it had been addressed to me.
“The administrator tells me that the quarterly distribution from Arthur’s trust cleared the account this morning. She says the room is paid for through December. I suppose I have your lawyer to thank for that.
The girls here don't know who Arthur Mercer was. They don't know about the house on the ridge. They give me my tea in a plastic mug with a blue lid because they say my hands shake too much for porcelain.
I found the photograph of you in your dress blues last night. The one from your graduation at Parris Island. You looked like Arthur. You had his eyes, even if you didn't have his blood. I don't know why I couldn't say that to you when you were standing in the hallway.
Tell the girl... tell Zaya that the lavender candle came from the boutique in town. It cost forty dollars. I didn't buy it at the supermarket. I want her to know that much.”
The letter ended there. No signature. No request for a visit. Just the lonely, pathetic defense of an old woman trying to negotiate with her own reflection from the edge of the grave.
I folded the paper and slipped it into my pocket.
When Travis came home that evening, his truck kicking up dust on the gravel drive, he found me standing by the newly finished round table on the back terrace.
The mahogany had been sanded down until it was smooth as silk, finished with five coats of tung oil that brought out the deep, amber-red glow of the old wood. It was round, solid, and held twelve wide cedar chairs arranged in an unbroken circle beneath the shade of the great sugar maple.
I handed him the letter.
He read it standing up, the setting sun catching the gray in his beard, his face completely motionless. He didn't scoff. He didn't roll his eyes. He read every line twice, then folded the paper back into its envelope and set it on the center of the round table.
"Are you going to see her?" I asked gently.
Travis looked out over the lawn, where the dogs were chasing fireflies in the gathering dusk.
"Next week," he said, his voice quiet, steady, and devoid of the old bitterness. "I’ll take Zaya."
May you like
I blinked, surprised. "You want to take Zaya to see her?"
Travis looked at me, his eyes clear and calm. "Lorraine spent eighty years thinking that love was something you gave to people who earned it, Maya. I want Zaya to see what happens to people who live like that. Not to punish Lorraine. But so our daughter knows that when you have power, the only thing that matters is how you use it to protect the people who have none."
