I watched my tears fall onto the glass.
“I made three. Patricia has one, I have one, and that one is for you. I held on to it until I thought you were ready.”
I mouthed two words—thank you.
“Do you want to know why you had the C-section?” Dad whispered. I nodded my head.
“You were bleeding, internally. The surgeon didn’t think it wise to operate while you carried Hannah. So they delivered her, and then fixed you. I made a decision, Dani; a decision that was impossible to get right. Save you, and take a risk on Hannah’s slim chance of survival, or maybe lose you both if they didn’t operate.”
I stared at him. He did nothing to hide the tears that fell from his eyes.
“I chose you, and I prayed every second of every minute of every day that Hannah would make it. If I had chosen otherwise, the surgeon would have overridden me anyway. Your life was more important.”
I swallowed hard.
Lincoln didn’t reply immediately. The day after I’d left the letter in the honesty box, I’d walked back up the lane, and although mine had gone, there wasn’t a reply. Nor was there one the following day. At first, I wondered if my question had put him off replying. I walked along the beach and found the bottle missing, maybe the tide had finally taken it out.
I was still processing what my dad had told me. It had been the first time I’d learned of the details. I couldn't imagine the position he’d been put in, but there was a tiny piece of me that had hoped he would have given both Hannah and me just a little longer to see. Maybe another month on and she would have survived. But then, I didn’t know if I would have had a month.
It was later that day when I walked into the kitchen and saw an envelope on the table. Dad was busy making tea. I sat and picked it up.
“That was on the doormat,” he said. He didn’t ask anymore and I didn’t offer an explanation. I took the tea he handed me, picked up the envelope, and walked upstairs to my sanctuary by the window. I sat for a while, just looking out to sea and turning the envelope over continuously in my hand. Eventually, I opened it.
Dani,
My wife died of breast cancer a couple of years ago, now. She didn’t tell me she’d felt a lump, she didn’t ask me to accompany her to the doctor’s, or the consultant for her diagnosis. She even started treatment without me knowing. I found out by mistake. I took a call from the oncology office, changing an appointment. Can you imagine the shock? I was so angry with her. She hadn’t wanted me to worry about her. It was my job to worry about her! We fought, and I felt like a shit for walking out and slamming the door on her tears. Of course, we patched things up but I was hurt.
There will always be a little hurt inside I guess. I wasn’t there to hold her hand and comfort her when she got the news. I wasn’t there to question the doctors, ask for second opinions, or discuss treatment. I wasn’t there when she had her first chemo session, and for a long time I felt excluded from her illness. I understand now, but it took time.
As for answering your second question—how long does it take to feel again? That’s a hard one to answer. I felt anger, then sadness, then numbness. I screamed at the world for a while. I spent a long time looking at the bottom of an empty whisky bottle, wondering why I was still alive after consuming bottle after bottle.
It was six months before I realised being drunk all the time wasn’t working. It was another two months before I was clean, before the shakes, the sickness, left me, and my body was cleansed of the poison I’d been feeding it. It was only then that I was able to breathe without the pain.
Shall I tell you a secret? When she started to lose her hair, she asked me to cut it off. I keep that hair in a little box. One day I intend to throw the hair into the sea, her favourite place. I can’t bring myself to do it just yet.
Go talk to them, Dani. You don’t need the details of what actually happened, but you do need to know one thing. I can guarantee Trey would have done the same thing over and over. Protecting you, protecting Hannah, it’s instinct. It’s inbuilt, part of our DNA, it’s how our brains are wired. He did what came naturally to him, to us, to men in general.
You’ll get there; don’t put a time limit on it. There are no rules, Dani.
Lincoln.
I hadn’t realised I’d been crying until a tear dripped onto his letter. Perhaps I’d already hit that numbness stage, maybe my sore cheeks had desensitised to the wetness. One thing happened in that moment. I felt. I felt his pain course through me, pushing mine to one side for a moment.
I cried for him and not for myself.
Chapter Five
Lincoln and I wrote to each other, maybe twice a week, for another month before I felt able to visit Trey and Hannah. Over that month, he told me about his wife and I told him about times with Trey. We shared memories. Some of those memories hadn’t been shared with anyone other than our dead partners. We shared secrets, fears, and we cried. He’d told me of his tears when he read my letters, and I told him of mine. Maybe it was the anonymity, but opening up through words on paper made the confusion start to dispel.
Not once in that time did Dad ask about the letters. He’d pick them up from the mat inside the door and leave them in the kitchen if I hadn’t gotten to them first.
It had been ten months since Trey and Hannah died and for the first time I felt able to make a decision. First I needed to do something.
I’m going to the cemetery, I wrote, pushing the pad towards Dad.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. I think I need to do this alone, but I’m scared to walk there myself, I wrote.
“How about I drive you? I’ll sit in the car until you’re ready to come home.”
The cemetery was within easy walking distance and I wasn’t sure the last time Dad had used his car. I nodded though.
Dad rifled through a drawer for his keys. He held out a hand to me. It took longer to get the car from the workshop than it did to actually drive to the cemetery. As promised, Dad parked in the car park and let me walk to their grave alone. They had a headstone; I didn’t know where that had come from. I sat on the grass and ran my fingers over the marble. Engraved in silver were their names and dates.
I didn’t cry that day, which surprised me. I expected to fall apart. I expected to feel that pain which had been a constant companion. In my head, I talked to them. I told them about the letters and how talking to Lincoln had become some form of therapy for me. I told Trey about the decisions I was about to announce to Dad. I told Hannah I was sorry for not holding her. I told them both that I loved them, that I missed them.
“Okay?” Dad said when I opened the car door. I nodded.
He took hold of my hands between his and rubbed some warmth back into them. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”
Dad pulled the car in front of his old workshop. It had been a barn used by the farm for many years before he’d bought it. It sat on the boundary of his garden. I climbed from the car and looked at the black, wooden clad building. I took hold of Dad’s hand and encouraged him to walk with me. We circled the barn, stopping behind it to look out over the sea.
I hadn’t brought my pad and I was desperate to ask him something. I opened and closed my mouth.
“What are you saying, Dani?” he asked.
I looked around. I bent down and pulled a piece of grass, I held it out to him then pointed to the ground. I walked away from the barn to a hedge, pointed to the ground again and then Dad.
He frowned and gently shook his head. I sighed in frustration.
“Wait! The land…” he said, I nodded enthusiastically.
“Is this land mine? Is that what you’re asking?” I nodded again.