The day she stopped waiting

Chapter 10

Then there was the security footage.

The building manager at Lydia's apartment kept six months of footage as a matter of policy. The investigator had already pulled the footage from the lobby and the parking garage. But it was the hallway footage the fourth floor, outside Lydia's apartment that no one had thought to request until Ethan asked.

Selene on the footage, a Tuesday in October. Three months before the engagement party. Letting herself into Lydia's apartment with a key she was not supposed to have. Staying forty minutes. Leaving with a folder under her arm.

They asked Selene about it. She didn't deny it.

"I was looking for something," she said.

She was sitting in the family living room, Patricia and Gerald on one sofa, Ethan in the armchair across from them. She was composed, but the composure had a different quality than it used to thinner, somehow. Like something underneath it was tired.

"What were you looking for?" Ethan asked.

A long pause.

"I found letters," Selene said. "Letters Lydia had written to Patricia and Gerald. Letters she'd written but never sent. She used to write things out to feel less alone with them." She looked at her hands. "I wanted to see what she'd said. About me."

"And?" Patricia's voice was very quiet.

Selene looked up. Her eyes, for the first time in a long time, were not warm and easy. They were something else. Something worn.

"She never said anything mean about me," Selene said. "In four years of letters she never once said she hated me. She said she loved me. She said she was sorry for feeling what she felt, because she knew it wasn't my fault." Her voice was careful. "She apologized. For her own pain. To people who weren't even reading it."

The room was very quiet.

"She kept apologizing," Selene said, softer. "That's what I didn't expect. I expected — I don't know what I expected. But not that. Not her apologizing for existing too loudly in her own family."

Patricia made a sound that wasn't quite a word.

"I should have told her what I found," Selene said. "I should have knocked on her door and said I'd read the letters and that she was right and I was sorry. I kept meaning to. I kept waiting for the right moment."

She stopped.

"There was no right moment," she said. "There was no right moment because she ran out of time to give me one."

Gerald finally reached across the table and picked up the journal.

He held it for a long time without opening it.

Then he said: "What did we do?"

Not to anyone in particular. Not a question expecting an answer. Just a man, finally sitting inside the truth of what his years of inattention had cost.

Selene looked at the floor. Patricia looked at her hands. Ethan looked at the window.

Nobody had a good answer.