Page 56 of Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar 2)

The moment my arms were wrapped around her, the tears came again, soaking the front of my shirt. This was how we’d gotten through those days after Jamie had died. We’d held on to one another, mourning the death of our brother and friend.

“I hate this,” she whispered.

“So do I.”

“I feel like every time I go to the mailbox, I’m going to get blasted back into the past. I already cried these tears. I don’t want to do it again.”

I kissed the top of her hair. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is. I wrote them. And I should have gotten rid of them years ago.”

“No.” Molly shook her head as she went back to her seat. “I’m glad you didn’t. This one . . . I needed to read this one.”

“Why?” I took the chair by her side, toying with the side of the letter.

I didn’t want to open it again. I didn’t want to read it and remember. Because it wasn’t fair that she’d had to relive it and I hadn’t, I slid the paper across the table and opened the folds, reading the words I’d written in agony years ago.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed the letter, hoping the emotions would stay on the page and in the past where they belonged.

“I need to tell you something.” Molly blew out a long breath. “Poppy and I were talking the other day. She wondered if Jamie’s death was the reason we split up. She thought if she’d handled it better, we might still be together.”

“Damn it.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I hate that she feels that way. She wasn’t the reason we split up.”

“That’s what I told her too. But ever since, I’ve been thinking. All these letters . . .” She pointed to the paper. “They’ve made me think. For so many years, I’ve tried to pinpoint it.”

“Pinpoint what?”

She paused. “The beginning of the end of us.”

I rocked back in my chair. “You think this was it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t. But now that I’ve read this letter, yes. I do.”

How could this letter make her think this was what had caused our split? “I’m not following you. We had some good years after this. We had Kali then Max after this.”

“You said it in your letter. Everything changed. After Jamie died, everything changed.”

“His death wasn’t the reason we split up.”

“Then what was? We were different after his death.”

I opened my mouth to answer but shut it when the words didn’t come. What had caused our divorce? What had taken us from a place where all I needed to get through one of the hardest moments of my life was one glance at her?

“I don’t know.”

“It wasn’t just one thing,” she said. “But after this, the bad days started.”

“What bad days?”

“The bad days. We conceived Kali during makeup sex. We’d both been so tired and exhausted. You were spending nearly every second with Poppy, making sure she was . . . well, you know.”

Alive.

My parents had gone back to Alaska after the funeral. They’d each had to work because . . . life went on. Except for Poppy, it hadn’t. She’d spent months nearly comatose.

Poppy had slipped so far into a depression, nothing had helped. Nothing I said would make her smile. Nothing I did made her open up and talk. She didn’t even cry.