PART 3
Yesterday, Jasper turned eighteen.
Nothing fancy — just the three of us, the way it had mostly always been. A homemade dinner, a cake with far too many candles crammed onto it, Mrs. Delacroix’s laugh filling the kitchen the way it had filled a thousand ordinary evenings before this one.
He blew out the candles, all of them in one determined breath, grinning at both of us.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, yellowed letter.
He slid it across the table toward me.
I laughed. “Buddy, it’s your birthday. What’s this?”
“I know, Dad,” he said, glancing toward Mrs. Delacroix. “She told me today was finally the right day.”
PART 4
I looked over at her. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her teacup rattled slightly against its saucer as she set it down, both hands trembling.
I looked back down at the envelope.
The date written across the front, in a hand I hadn’t seen in eighteen years, was from the week Jasper was born.
The handwriting was Vivian’s.
“Odile,” I said slowly, using her first name for maybe the third time in eighteen years of knowing her. “What is this?”
Mrs. Delacroix wiped her eyes with the back of one hand.
“Foster,” she said, “she didn’t leave because she stopped loving either of you. I promised her, eighteen years ago, that I wouldn’t let you or Jasper see that letter until he turned eighteen. I’ve been keeping that promise every single day since, even on the days it felt genuinely wrong to keep it.”
