I blink down at the page, unable to make sense of it. “This is the letter he brought you that night?”
“You know damn well it was.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head emphatically. “I didn’t send you this. I wrote two letters. One for Teddy, to explain why I couldn’t marry him, and one for you. The one I wrote to you was short. Eight words, to be precise. This is Teddy’s letter.”
He picks up his drink and lifts it to his lips, then puts it down again without sipping. He’s silent for a time, eyes locked straight ahead as he registers what I’ve just told him. “The one meant for me,” he says at last, his face unreadable. “What did it say?”
I look away, recalling the discarded drafts that had ended up in the wastebasket that day, failed attempts to tell him goodbye—all torn to shreds. Because in the end, I realized I couldn’t say it. “It said . . . I’m coming. Wait for me.”
“That’s five words. What else did it say?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“No, but I’d like to know, just the same.”
I make the mistake of looking at him then. Our eyes hold a moment, a chilly clash of wills. “I don’t remember,” I say finally and reach for my wine. “But I do know it didn’t say this. I can’t understand it. I put a stamp on Teddy’s letter the minute I sealed it and told Dickey to drop it in the mailbox. He couldn’t have mixed it up with yours.”
“There was no stamp on the envelope he left.”
A blade of cold slices through me as the truth dawns, terrible yet inescapable. “They were switched. Somehow Teddy’s letter wound up in the envelope meant for you.”
He looks skeptical now. “You’re saying Dickey opened your letters and read them, then mixed them up when he put them back?”
“I don’t know. But something happened. Look.” I point to my name—my real name—at the bottom of the page. “It’s signed Marian.” I pause, swallowing past the sudden threat of tears. “I was only ever Belle to you. If this was meant for you, why would I sign with my actual name?”
He glances at the signature but shows no sign of being swayed. “What you’re suggesting makes no sense. I can’t see Dickey risking his hide for a peek at his aunt’s letters. The poor kid was scared to death. In fact, when I asked him to relay a message to you, he said he wasn’t allowed to talk to me and bolted.”
“Was the envelope torn when you got it? Do you remember?”
He eyes me with astonishment. “Do I remember?”
I drop my gaze. “I just meant—”
“No. The envelope wasn’t torn.”
“I don’t understand how . . .” I stop midsentence as a thought occurs. “What were you going to ask Dickey to tell me?”
There’s a long beat of silence. Finally, I think he’s about to answer. Instead, he looks down at his glass, giving the ice at the bottom a shake. “I can’t remember.”
Fair enough.
I pick up the letter again, scanning the lines I penned so long ago, the vague phrasing and carefully chosen words—words meant for another man—and I imagine Hemi reading them for the first time. My throat aches as I realize how easy it would have been to believe they’d been meant for him and the gut-wrenching pain they must have caused. I try to wrap my head around it. How could it have happened? And then I remember Corinne coming into my room while I was writing the letters and how she was still there, tidying up, when I returned from the bathroom.
“My sister,” I say, knowing it’s true. “She did this.”
I feel his eyes on me as he waits for more, but I’m incapable of speech, the emotions too much to process all at once. I should be stunned, horrified to learn my own flesh and blood would be capable of such deceit, but I’m not. That kind of sabotage is right up Corinne’s alley. But I am angry with myself for not having realized it sooner and for not having been more careful with the letters.
The repercussions of her treachery hit like a fist. What’s been stolen from me. From us. The life we should have shared. The son we would have raised together. The ache of it nearly doubles me over.
Tears blur my vision and I reach for a cocktail napkin to blot my eyes, aware that Hemi is waiting for me to go on. “Corinne came to my room while I was writing the letters. She must have gone snooping while I was in the bathroom and realized I was breaking it off with Teddy. I don’t know how she did it, but she must have switched them.”
His expression is guarded as he studies me, distant, impervious. I submit to his scrutiny, wondering what he sees and why it should matter after so many years. But it does. Suddenly it matters much too much. Has he grasped the fallout from my sister’s actions, or am I the only one lamenting what might have been? “Say something,” I say at last.
He looks down at his hands, fisted on the edge of the bar. “What is it you want me to say?”
“I want you to say you believe Corinne switched the letters, and to acknowledge what that means.”
“It was a lifetime ago, Marian. At this point, I don’t think it matters.”
The use of my real name—so foreign on his tongue—is like a dash of icy water, but his cavalier response cuts to the bone. I blink at him, stunned. “You came all the way to Boston to crash an awards dinner because you claimed you wanted an explanation. Now it doesn’t matter?”
“I didn’t come all the way to Boston. I live here now. At least part-time.”
This is news. Unsettling news. “You live here?”
“Two years now. I split time between here and London. More here than there lately.”
“You said you read about the awards dinner in the paper. Is that how you knew I’d be here tonight?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t Ashlyn?”
He frowns. “Who’s Ashlyn?”
“Never mind. It isn’t important.”
We fall silent for a time. Hemi nurses his gin and tonic while I stare at my reflection in the bar mirror. I should never have agreed to come. But now that I have, I can’t just leave it like this. “You don’t believe Corinne switched the letters,” I say when I can no longer bear the quiet. “You still believe I meant those words for you.”
“Whether you did or didn’t isn’t the point. Not anymore. Hell, maybe it never was. We were both ready to believe the worst about the other. That doesn’t say much for what we had, does it? Maybe we saved ourselves a lot of heartache.”
“Saved ourselves a lot of heartache?” I echo, incredulous that he could say such a thing, let alone believe it. “Is that what you’ve been telling yourself all these years? That you disappearing from my life saved me a lot of heartache? That I simply . . . moved on? Never wondering where you were or if I’d ever hear from you again? Tell me you don’t actually believe that.”
He looks away, his face so steely, I barely recognize him. “Sometimes it’s easier to see a thing in the rearview mirror. When there’s a bit of distance between it and you.”
No. Whatever happened that day, whatever place we’ve come to now, I won’t let him remember us that way—as a pair of reckless young lovers who had narrowly escaped disaster because I got cold feet and ran back to Teddy. “Come with me to talk to Corinne. We’ll go together. Tomorrow.”