My Stepchildren Put Sticky Notes on My Furniture at Their Father’s Funeral—Then His Final Letter Stopped Them Cold
PART 4
“What’s that?”
“Your husband told me to give this to you only after Diane and Ross opened their letters.”
I stared at the envelope.
“Why?”
Michael looked at me.
“Because your husband knew they would try to make you feel guilty.”
He handed it to me.
“And he wanted you to know the truth.”
I took it.
My fingers barely worked.
Frank’s handwriting.
The same handwriting that had written grocery lists.
Birthday cards.
Doctor appointments.
The same handwriting that had written “I love you” on a napkin at a diner twenty years ago.
I looked at Whit.
“Should I open it?”
He nodded.
I broke the seal.
There was only one page.
I read the first line.
And everything inside me stopped.
“‘Eileen, if you are reading this, then I am gone.’”
I covered my mouth.
The room blurred.
“‘And if Diane and Ross are standing there, I need you to remember something.’”
I read on.
“‘You are not responsible for what they do next.’”
A tear fell onto the paper.
“‘You spent nineteen years trying to earn a place in a family that should have welcomed you from the beginning.’”
I closed my eyes.
“‘You don’t have to earn it anymore.’”
My knees nearly gave out.
My sister came beside me.
I continued reading.
“‘There is one thing I never told you because I was afraid you would refuse it.’”
I looked up.
Michael was watching me.
Whit was watching me.
Diane was crying.
Ross was completely still.
I lowered my eyes to the letter.
And read the final paragraph.
“‘The house is yours, Eileen. But it is not your prison. If you want to stay, stay. If you want to sell it, sell it. If you want to leave everything behind and travel, do it. I want the rest of your life to belong to you.’”
I couldn’t see anymore.
The words had become a blur.
But there was one final sentence.
One sentence that made my heart pound.
“‘And if they ever ask you why I left them what I did, tell them to read the last page of my notebook.’”
I looked at Michael.
“What is on the last page?”
Michael’s expression changed.
For the first time since he entered my house, he looked genuinely uncomfortable.
Whit slowly closed his folder.
Diane whispered,
“What does it say?”
Michael didn’t answer.
Ross stood.
“Tell us.”
Michael looked at him.
“Your father didn’t write about money.”
He opened the black notebook again.
He turned all the way to the final page.
Then he placed it on the table.
There were only three lines.
Michael read them aloud.
“‘If my children are reading this, then they have already learned that my money was never the test.’”
He turned the page slightly.
“‘The test was whether they could love someone without knowing what that person could give them.’”
Diane began to sob.
Ross stared at the words.
Michael read the final line.
“‘And if they failed that test, there is one final thing I need them to know.’”
He stopped.
I looked at him.
“What?”
Michael slowly raised his eyes.
“He asked me to tell you that he never intended to leave the house empty.”
My heart stopped.
“What does that mean?”
Michael closed the notebook.
“It means your husband left instructions for someone else to live here.”
Diane looked up.
“Who?”
Michael didn’t answer.
Instead, he reached into the briefcase one last time.
And pulled out a second key.
A brass key.
Old.
Heavy.
Attached to a tag with an address written on it.
An address I recognized.
My face went cold.
Because it was the address of the small cottage Frank had owned before we were married.
The cottage everyone believed he had sold nineteen years ago.
Michael placed the key in my palm.
“Eileen,” he said quietly, “your husband left one more secret.”
I stared at the key.
“What secret?”
Michael looked toward the hallway.
“There’s someone living in that cottage.”
Ross stepped forward.
“Who?”
Michael’s answer came softly.
“Someone your father has been supporting for nineteen years.”
Diane stopped crying.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Nineteen years?”
Michael nodded.
“Exactly nineteen.”
And suddenly I remembered something Frank had said on the night he asked me for his good pen.
Something I hadn’t understood then.
He had looked at me across the kitchen table and said,
“Eileen, someday you’re going to learn that our marriage wasn’t the only promise I kept.”
At the time, I thought he was talking about me.
I realized now that he wasn’t.
And when Michael finally told me the name of the person living in that cottage, the entire room went silent.
Because it was a name I had heard before.
A name Frank had forbidden me to ask about.
A name that had been written on the back of an old photograph I thought I had thrown away twenty years ago.
The name was…
“Laura.”
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