I wasn’t.
She answered on the second ring.
“Dad?”
“Penny, I need you to come over.”
Her voice changed immediately. “What’s happened?”
“Dad?”
I looked at Irene’s letter in my hand.
“Your mother left me something.”
Pregnancy & Maternity
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s the problem. Please, honey.”
“I’m coming.”
“What kind of something?”
***
Twenty minutes later, Penelope walked in carrying her purse. She took one look at me and closed the door behind her.
“Dad, tell me.”
I held up the letter.
“Your mother was married before me.”
Penelope stared at me. “Before you?”
“Dad, tell me.”
“At 18.”
“Did you know?”
“No. I had no idea.”
She sat beside me.
I opened the letter again.
“She thought the divorce was final. Fourteen years after we married, she found out it wasn’t.”
“No. I had no idea.”
Penelope’s face tightened.
“So when you married Mom…”
“She was still
legally married to someone else.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then I read the next line.
I contacted him.
“So when you married Mom…”
My stomach turned.
“She found him.”
Penelope leaned closer. “Does she say why?”
I kept reading.
Irene explained that the man had been just as shocked. He’d believed the divorce was complete, too.
“Why didn’t she tell me then?”
“Does she say why?”
Penelope shook her head. “Maybe the answer’s further down.”
Near the bottom, Irene had written:
The rest is in the box where I kept the papers I was most afraid you’d find.
I stood so quickly Penelope followed.
“You know what box she means?”
“I think so.”
“Maybe the answer’s further down.”
Upstairs, I opened the cabinet in our bedroom and reached behind the usual papers.
My hand hit cardboard.
I pulled out a small box I’d never seen before.
