Chapter 6 - We Broke The Seal
Camilla asked to open the envelope after lunch.
Not immediately after Anthony.
Not while angry.
She took a shower.
Changed out of the cream dress she'd slept in.
Ate half a sandwich.
Then came into my study and said:
“I'm ready.”
I took the envelope from the safe.
Set it between us.
“It's addressed to you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“So you open it.”
“You can leave.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
She stared at Elena's handwriting.
“Whatever she wrote, I don't want Marco's version in my head while you read it.”
I broke the seal.
The wax cracked more easily than it deserved to after twenty-three years.
Inside were four handwritten pages.
No photographs.
No legal papers.
No secret bank account.
Just Elena.
Her handwriting tilted harder when she was angry.
The first line proved she had been furious.
Domenico,
I am writing this because right now I do not trust either of us to remember this week honestly.
I stopped.
Camilla leaned closer.
“Keep going.”
I read silently for several paragraphs.
Then aloud where it mattered.
Elena explained Lydia had asked for help.
Not because Anthony hit her.
She wrote specifically that Lydia had never told her that.
Because Anthony checked every purchase.
Read her phone bills.
Called friends to verify where she was.
Decided which arguments were private enough that she was not allowed to discuss them with anyone else.
When Lydia opened an account for money she earned from part-time design work, Anthony closed it into their joint household system “for simplicity.”
I stopped reading.
Camilla stared at the page.
“What?”
I handed it to her.
She read.
Her eyes moved faster.
Then slowed.
Elena had helped Lydia meet with an attorney.
Helped her reserve Harbor House for three nights while she decided what to do.
Nothing permanent.
No grand escape.
Time.
That was what Lydia had asked for.
Three days in which no man knew where she was.
I had destroyed that within hours.
The letter continued.
You keep saying Anthony has a right to know because they are married.
I need you to understand why that sentence frightens me.
Marriage cannot mean the person with the most resources gets to decide when privacy becomes betrayal.
My throat tightened.
I had forgotten how direct Elena could be.
Or maybe I had remembered and spent years sanding the edges.
Camilla looked at me.
“Mom knew about the investigator.”
“Yes.”
The next paragraph described the night she discovered it.
She had found a receipt in my desk.
Asked me.
I lied for approximately thirty seconds.
Then admitted everything.
She wrote:
You say you did it because you were scared of losing me.
I believe you.
That does not make it loving.
Camilla stopped reading.
She looked at me.
I said nothing.
The letter moved to Harbor House.
Elena wrote that she had explicitly asked me not to disclose Lydia's location.
I promised.
Then did it anyway.
She wrote:
You chose Anthony's certainty over Lydia's request because his fear looked more reasonable to you than hers.
Camilla leaned back.
I stared at Elena's words.
Twenty-three years later, they still hurt in exactly the place intended.
Then came the part about Camilla.
I did not take our daughter because I was leaving you forever.
I took her because I was too angry to leave her in a house with you while I decided whether I could come back without teaching her that love means surrendering every locked door.
Camilla stopped breathing for a second.
“Read that again.”
I did.
Her eyes filled.
She had spent months imagining her mother tried to take her.
Elena had written almost the opposite.
The letter ended less cleanly than either of us expected.
Elena did not know whether our marriage would survive.
She did not promise to return.
She did not declare me unforgivable.
She wrote:
I love you.
I am furious with you.
Both are true tonight.
If I come home, do not use my return as proof that I was wrong to leave.
That line broke something in me.
Not loudly.
I stared at the paper until the words blurred.
Camilla took the final page.
There was a postscript.
P.S. If I decide to come back, I'll ask Lydia for this and probably burn it. If she still has it years from now, then she kept something I asked her to destroy.
Camilla frowned.
“What did she ask Lydia to destroy?”
I turned the page.
Nothing else.
“That.”
“The letter?”
“Apparently.”
Camilla stared.
“Then why didn't Lydia destroy it?”
I didn't know.
Elena had returned to me after nineteen days.
We stayed married seventeen more years.
Lydia kept the letter anyway.
Not accidentally.
She had wrapped it.
Labeled it.
Protected the seal.
Camilla looked at the broken wax.
“Mom came home.”
“Yes.”
“She asked Lydia to destroy this if she did.”
“That seems to be what she meant.”
“And Lydia didn't.”
“No.”
Camilla looked toward the door.
“Marco found it.”
“Yes.”
“Kept it.”
“Yes.”
Then she whispered:
“Three people had the chance to make sure this letter never reached you.”
She looked at me.
“Mom.”
I nodded.
“Lydia.”
“Yes.”
“Marco.”
“Yes.”
May you like
Camilla folded the pages carefully.
“And only one of them is still alive to tell us why.”
