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Part 2: The Letters
I read the first letter at the kitchen table. Frank sat across from me.
Danny, Mom’s gone. You’re nine. You keep asking me if I’m okay. I tell you yes. I’m not.
I don’t know how to talk to you. Every time I look at you, I see her. Her eyes. Her smile.
So I’m going to write it down instead. I’m sorry I can’t say it out loud.
I opened the next one. And the next.
There were a hundred and twelve letters.
Danny, age ten. You won the spelling bee. I was in the back row. I left before you saw me. I couldn’t stop crying.
Danny, age thirteen. You asked for new shoes. I didn’t have the money. I told you to wear two pairs of socks. I went out to the truck and hit the steering wheel until my hand hurt.
Danny, age eighteen. I’m charging you rent today. You looked at me like I was a monster.
But I watched your mother’s family spend every dollar they ever had. I don’t want that for you. I’m putting it all away. And I’m matching every dollar. When you’re ready, you’ll have a house.
Danny, age twenty-one. I bought new fishing rods. Two of them. One’s yours. I keep meaning to ask you to go fishing with me. I keep losing my nerve.
I looked up at Frank. I couldn’t see through my tears.
Frank said, quietly, Your dad had a hard time after your mom passed. The doctor called it depression. He went to a counselor once. He never went back.
He said, He told me every week how proud he was of you. He just didn’t know how to tell you.
Then Frank said something else.
He said, Two years ago, his doctor told him his heart was bad. He knew. That’s when he asked me to hold this box.
The next morning, my phone rang. It was my aunt Lynn. Dad’s younger sister.
She said she’d heard about the savings account from Frank. Small towns.
She said, That money is family money, Danny. Your father borrowed ten thousand dollars from me after your mom’s funeral. He never paid it back.
She said, I expect my share. You can send me a check.
I kept my voice calm.
Aunt Lynn, the account is in my name. Dad set it up for me.
She said I was ungrateful. She said I didn’t even like my father. She said I should be ashamed taking money from a man I barely spoke to.
I’ll talk to the attorney handling Dad’s estate, I said. If Dad owed you, they’ll find the records.
She hung up.
When I set the phone down, Frank was holding up something from the bottom of the box.
A single brass key on a fishing lure keychain.
He said, This is to the cabin up at Miller Lake.
Your dad bought it three years ago. He never told you.
Part 3: Five Years
That night, I sat at the kitchen table with Dad’s letters spread out in front of me. And I let myself count.
Fourteen years since Mom passed.
Sixty rent payments. Two hundred fifty dollars each. Fifteen thousand dollars I handed over to my father.
I counted the times I patched my work boots. Three. Duct tape. Super glue. Then more duct tape.
I counted the times my car broke down. Fourteen. Every time, I fell further behind.
I counted the weeks we didn’t speak. At least twenty.
I counted the times I told my friends my dad didn’t care about me.
Too many to count.
Then I counted Dad.
Sixty matching deposits. Fifteen thousand dollars of his own money. He worked overtime at the plant to make them. Frank told me.
A hundred and twelve letters. Every one written. None sent.
Two fishing rods. One for me.
A cabin on Miller Lake. For a fishing trip he never had the nerve to ask me to take.
And a pair of work boots. Brand new. My size. He must have bought them years ago. They were still in the box.
I thought about the night before he passed. I came home late. He was sitting in the living room in the dark.
He said, Danny?
I said, What?
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, Nothing. Good night.
I went to bed.
I’ll never know what he was going to say.
On Saturday morning, a car pulled into the driveway.
It was Aunt Lynn.
Part 4: Aunt Lynn
Aunt Lynn walked into the kitchen without knocking. She saw the letters on the table. The savings book.
She sat down across from me.
She said she was sorry for being harsh on the phone. She said she was grieving too.
Then she said, But you need to understand. Your father owed me ten thousand dollars.
She said when my mother passed, Dad couldn’t pay for the funeral. She lent him the money.
She said, He promised he’d pay me back. He never did. Not a dime.
She said, That account has thirty thousand dollars in it. It’s only fair I get what’s mine.
Then her voice changed.
She said, You barely spoke to him for five years, Danny. I talked to him every Sunday. I was the one he called when he was lonely.
She said, You don’t get to grieve him now just because he left you money.
Then she said the thing she had come to say.
Write me a check for ten thousand dollars. Or I’ll contest the will. I’ll tell the judge how you treated him.
I felt that one land. It was meant to.
Because some part of me believed her. I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t try.
I took a slow breath.
Aunt Lynn, I said quietly, I didn’t know he was trying either. Neither of us knew how.
She looked away.
But this account isn’t part of the estate, I said. He set it up in my name. It’s mine.
If Dad owed you money, the attorney can look at his records. I’ll honor whatever they find.
But I’m not writing you a check today.
Lynn started to argue.
Then Frank walked into the kitchen. He’d been in the garage, packing up Dad’s tools.
He was holding an old notebook. A ledger. Worn leather.
He set it on the table in front of Lynn.
He said, quietly, Lynn. Your brother paid you back.
Every dollar. Two hundred a month for four years.
He kept every receipt.
Part 5: Miller Lake
Lynn stared at the ledger.
Frank opened it. Page after page in Dad’s handwriting.
Lynn. $200. March. Lynn. $200. April.
Fifty payments. Ten thousand dollars. The last one was eight years ago.
At the bottom of the last page, Dad had written: Paid in full. Thank you for helping me bury her.
Lynn put her hand over her mouth.
She said, quietly, I forgot. I swear to you. I forgot he paid me back.
She sat there for a long time.
Then she reached across the table and picked up one of Dad’s letters. She read it. She started to cry.
She said, He never told me any of this either. Every Sunday, I asked how he was. He always said fine.
Lynn didn’t contest anything. She came back the next Sunday. She brought a casserole. We sat at the kitchen table and read Dad’s letters together.
She told me stories about Dad as a boy. How he cried at sad movies. How he wrote poems in high school and burned them.
I never knew.
I used part of the savings account for a down payment on a small house across town. Two bedrooms. A yard. A porch.
I kept Dad’s house too. For now.
In June, Frank and I drove up to Miller Lake.
The cabin was small. One room. A wood stove. A little dock stretching into the water.
Inside, on the wall, were photographs. Every one of them was me.
My spelling bee. My high school graduation. My first day at work. All taken from far away.
On the kitchen table were two fishing rods. One had a tag tied to it.
Danny’s.
Frank and I sat at the end of the dock all afternoon. We didn’t catch anything.
At sunset, I took out the last letter from the box. I’d been saving it.
It was dated one week before Dad passed.
Danny, age twenty-three. I’m going to ask you to go fishing this weekend. I’m going to do it. I’m going to stop being a coward.
I hope you say yes.
I sat on the dock and read it three times.
Then I looked down at my feet.
I was wearing the work boots he bought me. Brand new. My size.
They didn’t let water in at all.
I said out loud, to the lake, to the sky, to wherever he was:
Yes, Dad.
I would have said yes.
