Chapter 20
The words were painful because they sounded like him.
Sophia knows about the archive because she helped organize the records. Margaret knows because she signed the transfer. Neither of them knows everything. I asked them not to tell you because I wanted to tell you myself. Each year I postponed it, the secret became harder to confess.
Claire pressed the letter flat.
I did not marry you for the archive. I married you because I loved you and because you saw parts of me I had spent my life hiding. But I cannot deny that your understanding of preservation made me believe you could help me save what my family would rather forget. That belief was selfish. I placed a responsibility beside our marriage without asking whether you wanted it.
The next paragraph was shorter.
If you leave me, Lake Briar is yours. If you stay, it remains yours. I have no right to make your freedom depend on my honesty, but I wanted the agreement to protect you if I failed.
Claire stopped reading.
There were no grand declarations in the letter. No demand that she understand him. No accusation that she had been unfair.
Only an explanation that arrived years too late.
At the bottom, Adrian had written:
I am sorry for every time I made you feel like a guest while telling myself I was building you a home.
Claire closed her eyes.
The room had become indistinct around her.
Emily sat beside her.
“Do you believe him?”
Claire looked at the boxes, the drawings, the documents carefully preserved for years.
“I believe he wrote this before he knew how badly he would fail me.”
“That’s not the same as believing everything.”
“No.”
Daniel examined the shelves. “There may be more.”
A sound came from downstairs.
The front door opened.
Claire stood.
Adrian’s voice carried through the entryway.
“Claire?”
Emily moved closer to her, but Claire raised a hand.
“I’m not afraid of seeing him.”
They descended together.
Adrian stood in the center of the foyer, wearing a dark coat dusted with snow. He looked tired, not physically diminished but stripped of the certainty that usually surrounded him. Margaret stood a few feet away, her expression grave.
Adrian’s gaze found Claire.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then he said, “I didn’t know you would come today.”
“You knew I would come eventually.”
“Yes.”
“Did you send someone to watch my apartment?”