He looked toward the window.
“I knew she wasn’t happy.”
She felt her chest tighten.
“Dad.”
He continued.
“We fought. About money. About her wanting to go back to school. About the hours I worked.”
Audrey listened.
“I thought we were having the kinds of problems married people have.”
He rubbed his hands.
“I thought we could fix them.”
Audrey leaned closer.
He looked at her.
“I would have let her go.”
His voice broke.
“If she’d told me she wanted a divorce, I would’ve let her go.”
Audrey began crying.
Graham wiped his eyes.
“But she didn’t have to leave you.”
She wrapped her arms around him.
He held her tightly.
For the first time since she was nine, Audrey felt her father cry against her shoulder.
The story didn’t remain private.
Nathaniel contacted an attorney.
Graham did the same.
The funeral arrangements were examined.
The paperwork was reviewed.
The memorial service, the supposed accident notification, the documents Caroline had presented, and the financial transactions surrounding the disappearance all became subjects of scrutiny.
The police began investigating whether anyone had falsified official records or made fraudulent representations.
Audrey wasn’t interested in the legal terminology.
She wanted one answer.
Why?
Marianne sent a letter three weeks after the confrontation.
It arrived in a plain white envelope.
Her handwriting was familiar from birthday cards Audrey had kept in a shoebox beneath her childhood bed.
The letter was six pages long.
Marianne wrote about feeling trapped.
About being too young when she married.
About losing herself in motherhood.
About resenting Graham.
About the shame that followed her departure.
She wrote that she had loved Audrey.
That she had never stopped.
That she had kept photographs.
That she had asked Caroline about her every year.
Audrey read the letter twice.
Then she noticed what wasn’t there.
No explanation for why Marianne had never contacted her.
No explanation for why she had allowed Graham to grieve.
No explanation for why her new husband had been told his stepdaughter was dead.
And no explanation for how love could coexist with eleven years of deliberate absence.
At the bottom of the final page, Marianne had written:
I hope someday you’ll understand that I was trying to survive.
Audrey stared at the sentence.
Then she took out a pen.
On a blank page, she wrote:
So was I.
She folded the paper.
Placed it in an envelope.
And mailed it.
Nathaniel called Audrey two months later.
She almost didn’t answer.
Then she remembered Grace.
The little girl with the construction-paper family.
“Hello?”
“Audrey, it’s Nathaniel.”
She sat on the edge of her bed.
“Hi.”
He hesitated.
“I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“It’s okay.”
He took a breath.
“I wanted to tell you something before you heard it from anyone else.”
Audrey closed her eyes.
“What?”
“Marianne and I have separated.”
She looked toward the window.
“I’m sorry.”
Nathaniel gave a quiet, humourless laugh.
“That’s generous of you.”
She didn’t answer.
He continued.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do yet.”
“Okay.”
“The children know she has another daughter.”
Audrey went still.