Six years ago.
Long before the triplets.
Long before Madison returned to Mark’s life.
Mark swallowed.
“He wrote that I had started treating responsibility like something being done to me.”
Emily said nothing.
She remembered that year.
Mark had been promoted.
He worked constantly.
Whenever Emily asked for time together, he accused her of not understanding pressure.
His father had apparently noticed.
“The last paragraph says he wanted to tell me in person,” Mark said. “But we had an argument.”
“What argument?”
“He told me I was becoming arrogant.”
A faint, painful smile crossed Mark’s face.
“I told him I didn’t need marriage advice from someone whose marriage had nearly failed.”
Emily inhaled quietly.
“So he never told you.”
“No.”
“Why was the letter in your folder?”
Mark looked genuinely confused.
Then his phone rang.
Margaret.
He stared at it.
Emily nodded.
“Answer.”
Mark put the call on speaker.
“Mom?”
“Mark, Claire told me you found your father’s letter.”
Mark looked at Emily.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“How did it get into my things?”
“I put it there.”
Mark leaned back.
“When?”
“About a year after he died.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“I tried.”
Margaret’s voice was steady.
“You told me you didn’t want another message from a dead man telling you how to live.”
Mark closed his eyes.
“I said that?”
“You did.”
Emily watched his face.
Margaret continued.
“So I placed it with the papers you kept from your father. I thought eventually you would find it.”
“In the blue folder?”
“No. It was with the insurance documents.”
Mark frowned.
Emily remembered.
“I moved those documents.”
He looked at her.
“When I was searching for the life insurance policy last month, I put everything into the blue folder because it was already on the desk.”
There it was.
No mystery.
No secret conspiracy.
Just a forgotten letter moved accidentally beside evidence of choices Mark had never intended Emily to see.
Sometimes life changed because of enormous events.
Other times, it changed because someone put the wrong papers in the right folder.
