Mark tore it open.
Inside were two sheets of paper.
He recognized the careful handwriting immediately.
Mark,
If you are reading this, then you eventually came home.
He stopped.
Eventually.
He continued.
The girls survived. So did I. I know that is the first thing you will want to know. Grace weighed four pounds, six ounces. Lily weighed four pounds, one ounce. Faith weighed three pounds, fourteen ounces. Faith needed the most help at first, but Dr. Patel says all three are stronger than anyone expected.
Mark sat heavily in the nearest chair.
He read the weights again.
He could picture almost nothing.
Three pounds, fourteen ounces.
How small was that?
His eyes moved down the page.
I am not keeping them from you to punish you. I need you to understand that. I am taking time because I woke up after surgery and realized I had spent too many years waiting for you to decide when our marriage mattered.
There is something else you need to know.
His fingers tightened on the paper.
The morning before I went into labor, I found the folder in your desk.
Mark stopped breathing.
Margaret watched him.
“What folder?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
Because suddenly he knew exactly which folder Emily meant.
The blue folder.
The one he had kept beneath a stack of insurance documents.
Inside it had been a printed apartment application.
A preliminary lease.
Emails between Mark and Madison.
And notes from a conversation he had not yet had the courage to have with his wife.
He returned to the letter.
I knew you were considering leaving. I knew you had toured an apartment. I knew Madison had gone with you.
Mark stood abruptly.
“It wasn’t what she thinks.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
Mark looked back down.
Maybe there is an explanation. Maybe there always is. But when the doctors told me our daughters could die and nobody could reach you, explanations stopped being enough for me.
Below that, Emily had written:
I am not filing for divorce today. I am also not coming home today.
I need space to recover and decide what kind of life I want our daughters to grow up watching.
