I watched him pour his coffee and wondered whether Lacey’s Nashville house would feel familiar to him in ways it never could to me. He had spent years going there. I had seen it only after the truth came out.
On the drive, neither of us spoke much.
I wasn’t frightened of what might be in the cabinet. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
What unsettled me was that Lacey had chosen this for me. She had left a key, a place to go, and a decision to make. Even after her death, I was still getting to know her a piece at a time.
The house stood on a quiet street lined with old maples. Its porch steps needed paint. One of the flower beds had grown wild since my last visit, but there were still purple blooms beside the path.
Jeremy unlocked the front door and stood back to let me enter first.
The rooms were cool and smelled faintly of dust and wood. We had been sorting through the house slowly, keeping what the estate required us to keep and donating things we couldn’t use. I hadn’t been ready to clear the upstairs room.
Now I climbed the stairs with Lacey’s key in my pocket.
The cabinet sat by a window overlooking the backyard. It was small, made of dark wood, with one door and a shallow drawer beneath it. I remembered seeing it before. I had assumed it held jewelry or papers.
Jeremy stayed near the bedroom door.
I took out the key. It turned without resistance.
Inside were three shelves.
The first held a stack of photographs bound with a ribbon. The second held a few books, their pages worn soft at the corners. On the bottom shelf sat a metal tin and a thick envelope with my name written across it.
I picked up the photographs first.
In one, Lacey stood outside a Nashville apartment with two women I didn’t know. In another, she was at a picnic table with Ruth, both of them squinting into the sun. There were pictures of birthday cakes, a snowy street, a small brown dog asleep on a sofa.
A life.
Years and years of it.
I had spent so long thinking about Lacey in relation to Jeremy that it startled me to see how much of her life had happened beyond either of us.
“She had a dog?” I asked.
“His name was Biscuit,” Jeremy said. “He died before she got sick.”
I smiled at the photograph. Biscuit looked as though he had never missed a meal.
Under the ribbon was one more picture. Lacey stood beside an older woman in a garden, both holding muddy trowels. On the back, in Lacey’s handwriting, was written: Mom and me, spring of 2014.
I returned it to the stack and looked at Jeremy.
“I knew almost nothing about her.”
“I should have told you more.”
I shook my head. “There were years when you couldn’t have mentioned her name without us fighting.”
“That doesn’t excuse hiding everything.”
“I know.”
It was an answer we could both live with because neither of us had to pretend the other had been perfect.
I opened the metal tin. It held ticket stubs, pressed flowers between folded sheets of paper, and a handful of cards from hospital patients. One card had been decorated with crooked yellow stars.
I set it aside without reading the message inside. It had been written to Lacey.
Then I picked up the envelope addressed to me.
Jeremy shifted his weight near the door.
“You can wait downstairs if you want,” I told him.
“I’ll stay, if that’s all right.”
“It is.”
There were two pages in the envelope.
Jill,
If you’re reading this, you found the cabinet. I’m glad Ruth was able to give you the key.
I wanted you to see these things because I’m afraid the story you’ll remember is the worst part of my life. It was a part of my life, and I won’t ask you to make it smaller. But I was here for other things, too.
I looked up at the photographs spread across the floor.
I turned the page.
The books are for the little free shelf at the hospital, if they’ll take them. Ruth will know where it is. Keep any photographs you’d like. My mother is in the one with the garden. She taught me to grow things, though I never learned to keep houseplants alive.
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Jeremy looked at me.
“Lacey couldn’t keep houseplants alive?” I asked.
“She could kill a cactus.”
I glanced back at the letter.
There is one more thing in the drawer. It took me a long time to write it. You may read it here, take it home, or leave it closed. That choice belongs to you.
I love the life I had, even the parts that didn’t turn out as I hoped. I hope you love yours.
Lacey
For a moment I held the pages in my lap and listened to a car pass outside.
Then I pulled open the shallow drawer.
It contained a single white envelope.
On its front, Lacey had written: For Jill, if she wants to know about that summer.
I knew which summer she meant.
The summer I had pursued Jeremy while he was with her. The summer she left Lawrenceburg. For twenty-two years, I had told myself a simple version of what happened: I wanted him, I got him, and she went away because of me.
I picked up the envelope.
“You don’t have to open it,” Jeremy said.
“I know.”
I held it for several seconds. Then I slipped it into my bag, still sealed.
“I want to take it home.”
We spent the next hour choosing books for the hospital shelf and putting the photographs back in order. I kept the picture of Lacey and Ruth. It seemed right to have one where she was laughing.
Before we left, I stood at the window and looked down at the untended flower beds.
“I’d like to ask Ruth what Lacey planted,” I said.
Jeremy came to stand beside me.
“She’d know.”
“We could come back and clean this up.”
“We could.”
On the way home, the white envelope stayed in my bag. I felt its weight whenever I reached for my phone or my keys.
That night, I took it out and laid it on the kitchen table.
Jeremy was sitting across from me, reading. He put his book down but didn’t ask.
“I think I’m ready,” I said.
I slid my finger beneath the flap.
Inside was a letter dated six months before Lacey died.
I unfolded it, and the first sentence made me stop.
Jill, I need to tell you what I said to Jeremy the day before I left Lawrenceburg.
I looked at Jeremy.
He had gone pale.
“What did she say?” I asked.
He stared at the letter in my hand.
“I thought you already knew.”

PART 9: What Lacey Said That Summer

“I thought you already knew,” Jeremy said.
I held the letter halfway open.
“Knew what?”
“At the hospital, Lacey told you she was the one who left. I thought she told you what she said to me before she went.”
“She didn’t.”
He looked at the paper in my hand. “Then read it.”
I hated how frightened I felt of a letter from a woman who had never tried to hurt me with one.
I smoothed the pages against the table and began.
Jill,
The day before I left Lawrenceburg, I asked Jeremy to meet me outside his mother’s house. I had already packed most of my things. I was pregnant, and I had not told anyone except him.
I told him I was going to Nashville whether he came with me or not.
I stopped.
Jeremy sat with his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
“You said you asked her to stay,” I told him.
“I did.”
I looked back at the letter.
He asked me to stay so we could talk about the baby and decide what to do. I heard that as pity. I was angry, and I told him I would never know whether he had chosen me or simply felt he had to. I said I wanted to start somewhere nobody knew us.
Then I said something cruel.
I read the next line twice.
I told him to go to you.
The kitchen clock ticked above the stove.
I knew you cared about him. I had seen you together, and I knew he cared about you. I told him that if he wanted to be with you, he should make his own choice and leave me out of it.
I lowered the page.
“That’s what she said?”
Jeremy nodded. “Yes.”
“And you went after her?”
“Twice that week. Once to her apartment and once to the bus station. She wouldn’t change her mind.”
“Did you offer to go to Nashville?”
“Yes. She said no.”
He gave me a moment to take that in.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“She left. I waited to hear from her. After a few weeks, she sent word through her mother that she was safe and didn’t want me to come.”
“And the baby?”
His face tightened.
“I didn’t know about the miscarriage then. I thought she was carrying our child, and I didn’t know where she was living.”
I remembered Lacey telling me she hadn’t told him when she lost the baby. I had heard it in a hospital room full of other revelations. Sitting at my own table, I finally understood what those weeks must have been like for both of them.
I read on.
I lost the baby after I got to Nashville. I should have told Jeremy. Instead, I let my anger make the decision for me. I told myself I would write when I could bear to hear his voice. Then months became years.
I also knew people in Lawrenceburg blamed you for my leaving. I could have corrected them. I didn’t. I’m sorry.
I stared at that sentence.
All those years, I had believed I deserved the looks people gave me in church and at the grocery store. Worse, I had carried their judgment into my own marriage. Whenever Jeremy and I fought, a part of me had thought, This is what I get.
Lacey had known about it.
I felt anger rise so quickly that I had to put the letter down.
“She could have said something,” I told Jeremy.
“She could have.”
“So could you.”
“I should have.”
I pressed my hands flat against the table.
“Why didn’t you?”
“By the time people started saying you’d broken us apart, Lacey was gone. I told people we’d ended things before you and I got together. Some believed me.”
“I never heard you say it.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell me?”
He thought for a moment.
“I told you she had chosen to leave.”
“You never told me she told you to go to me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think I’d come to you only because she sent me.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“Did you?”
“No, Jill.” He leaned forward. “I wanted to be with you. Lacey saying it out loud didn’t decide it for me.”
I watched him carefully. “Then you should have trusted me with the truth.”
“I should have.”
I picked up the letter again.
When Jeremy and I saw each other years later, I learned how much he had blamed himself. His mother had already told me. I was ashamed that I had let him carry that without knowing what happened to the baby.
I cannot settle every question between the three of us. I can tell you what happened that day. Jeremy asked me to stay and talk. I chose to leave. Later, he chose you.
I hope you can believe that your life together was your own. It began after a painful time in mine, but it belonged to the two of you.
Lacey
I read her name at the bottom, then turned the page over, though there was nothing else.
For years I had told the story in one sentence: I stole Jeremy.
That sentence had made sense of my guilt. It had also made Lacey into a woman with no choices of her own.
She had made choices. Jeremy had made choices. So had I.
I folded the letter slowly.
“I’m angry with her,” I said.
Jeremy nodded.
“I’m angry with you, too.”
“I know.”
“And I’m sad she had to write this down when she was sick.”
He looked toward the window. “So am I.”
I left the letter on the table and went to the sink for a glass of water. Outside, the porch light lit the steps where Jeremy and I had stood the week before, promising each other we would say difficult things plainly.
“When she first left,” I asked, “did you think she’d come back?”
“For a long time.”
I turned toward him.
“Even after we were together?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought she might come back to talk about the baby. I didn’t think she’d come back for me.”
He had answered without trying to make himself look better. I appreciated that, even as I wished the answer were easier to hear.
I sat down again.
“Why did you think Lacey told me all this at the hospital?”
“She said she was going to tell you the truth. When you came out of her room, you said she’d told you she left because she was pregnant.”
“I didn’t know there was more.”
“I should have asked.”
“Yes,” I said. “You should have.”
We sat quietly for a while. Then Jeremy asked if I wanted him to put the letter with the others.
“Leave it here tonight,” I said.
I wasn’t ready to file it away. I wanted to read it once more in the morning, when I could give every line the attention it deserved.
Before bed, I moved Lacey’s photograph from the kitchen counter to the table beside the letter. In it, she and Ruth were laughing at something outside the frame.
I had loved Jeremy when I was twenty. I had hurt Lacey by pursuing him while they were still together. Both things were true, even with what I knew now.
Tomorrow, I would call Ruth and ask about the flowers in Lacey’s garden. Tonight, I turned off the kitchen light and went upstairs, leaving the letter where I could find it again.