“No. I think I need to be alone.”
“Okay.” She stands. “I’ll be at the restaurant if you need me, but otherwise, I’m just going to let you be until you call. Is that right?”
“It’s perfect.”
She kisses my head. “I love you, Maya. More than I can possibly say.”
I grasp her hand and squeeze. “I love you, too.”
For a long time after she leaves, I sit where I am, washed by the breeze coming in through the open doors. The sea rolls in and out, and some bird is singing his heart out in the bushes. A plane drones over. I turn the envelope over and loosen the flap. A single sheet of paper is contained within, and I pull it out. A photo falls out, a faded black and white of a boy sitting on porch steps with a smiling woman.
Dear Maya,
I am not so much a writer, but there is much on my mind tonight. I am gravely ill, which I have known for a little while, but they tell me it is very bad and I will not be walking among the living for much longer, and I cannot even be sure I will be well enough to speak with you when you get out.
You will be very angry with me, I fear, but the thing I want to spare you is being forced to sit in a hospital room, day after day, with your dying father wasting away while people say kind things you know are not true. I can’t bear it for myself, but I especially cannot bear it for you.
Instead, I will take steps to see to a cleaner exit, which will not surprise you, I think. If I were a dog, I would go now into the forest and die on my own. It is the best I can do for you.
I think of you every hour, wondering what you are feeling, who you speak with, what you might be saying, learning in that place. If I try to put myself in your shoes, to answer your questions, I struggle, and I don’t know what to say. Or perhaps I don’t know how to say it right. I have not always been so good with words, with English and proper speech.
But nothing has ever been so important as this. I have loved many people in my life, but know this, Maya. You are and always have been the most important person in my life. My love for you is unlike any other feeling I have known. I don’t know how to tell you that I mean that, and I know you don’t trust me, but believe this. I want to set you free, so that you can soar like the powerful bird you were meant to be.
How do I free you, Maya-mine? I could apologize all day long, for a million things I have done wrong. Believe me, when they tell you to get your affairs in order, your life suddenly becomes a thing you can see at a distance, as if it belongs to someone else. I cannot change the past, and I could spend every hour from now until the moment of my death atoning for my sins and it would make no difference.
I ask myself what would make a difference to you. You stopped speaking to me when I left Meadow, but that was a thing between Meadow and myself, and nothing to do with you. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t a ridiculous old man, because it was the most foolish thing I ever did, but it was hardly a thing against you. Marriage is complicated, and none so much as ours.
Or maybe it does have to do with you. I don’t know. There is not time for all of it, for me to number my transgressions one by one, though I would if I thought it would free you.
I have let you down in so many ways. I wish I could return to the day I left you with your mother, alone and untended. It was the worst sin of my life, to abandon you that way, and I will spend centuries in purgatory atoning. I would still leave her. I should have left her before I did, and perhaps she would have fallen far enough to find help, but I just kept hoping I could help her. Save her, I suppose. She was a good person, Maya. Kind and lost. She loved you the best she could, but her illness devoured her, as it devoured my mother, as it nearly devoured you. I could not save her, but I should not have left you with her.
I return to that afternoon over and over in my mind. Over and over, I see your eyes begging me to stay. I see your little hands on my wrist. I hear your voice.
I abandoned you, Maya. It was the worst thing I ever did, and I cannot say any words that will make that better. I tried to atone afterward. I hope we gave you a good childhood, Meadow and I. You seemed happy. We loved you so much, and our family, our funny blended family, was so beautiful. I hope you had a childhood worth living. I think you did, finally.
The worst thing I ever did was leave you that day. The best thing I ever did was love you. I don’t know how to say it more clearly than that. You are my daughter, my flesh and blood, my heart and soul, and I want you to live a good life. I want you to love people without reservation. I want you to have children and name one after me and tell them about me. I want you to dance. I want you to cry. I want you to be fully in every minute and really live it. Will you do that for me, Maya? Please live and be happy and remember me. Wherever I am, I am thinking of you. I am part of you and you are part of me, always and forever. Be happy, my sweet girl. Be well.