The solicitor didn’t tell me to open the box.
He simply sat back.
His daughter crossed her arms.
Her brother stared at the carpet.
I looked at the brass catch.
Then at the solicitor.
“What are these?”
“Letters,” he said.
“I can see that.”
His daughter gave a quiet laugh.
“Of course she can.”
The solicitor looked at her.
“Mrs. Vale specifically instructed me that nobody was to interrupt.”
That shut her up.
I opened the first envelope.
The handwriting was my husband’s.
I knew it immediately.
Six years of birthday cards, shopping lists, notes left beside the kettle.
My hands began to shake.
The date was six months before our wedding.
I read the first line.
Dear Margaret,
I stopped.
Margaret.
My husband’s first wife’s name.
I looked at his daughter.
She had gone pale.
“You knew about these?”
“No.”
The solicitor cleared his throat.
“She did not.”
I looked back at the letter.
It continued:
I know what you think about the woman I’ve been seeing. I know what you’re telling people.
My eyes moved down the page.
But you are wrong about why I am going to marry her.
I swallowed.
His daughter leaned forward.
“Give me that.”
The solicitor raised a hand.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“Your father left instructions that Mrs. Vale was to read them first.”
I kept reading.
You think she’s marrying me for the house.
My throat tightened.
Perhaps part of her needs the security. I know what she owes. I know what she has been through. But that isn’t why I chose her.
I looked up.
His son was staring at me now.
The solicitor said quietly:
“Keep going.”
I did.
I chose her because she did something you have all forgotten how to do.
The next sentence made my chest hurt.
She asked me if I was lonely.
I put the letter down.
Nobody spoke.
For six years I had assumed my husband proposed because he wanted someone young beside him.
Someone to cook.
Someone to make the house feel occupied.
Someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions.
I had spent six years apologizing for being there.
Six years trying to prove I wasn’t what his children called me.
A gold digger.
A waitress.
A temporary wife.
And apparently, before I had even met him properly, he had already written about me.
I opened the second letter.
It was addressed to his solicitor.
If I die before the marriage, give this to my children. If I die after the marriage, give it to my wife first.
I looked at the solicitor.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
I read on.
They will accuse her. They always do.
His daughter stood abruptly.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Sit down,” the solicitor said.
She didn’t.
“He’s dead. He can’t defend himself. And now you’re letting her read private letters?”
“Your father paid me to follow his instructions.”
“My father was ill.”
“He was not.”
She went silent.
The solicitor looked at me.
“Mr. Vale was perfectly competent when he signed the documents.”
I turned another page.
There is something my children don’t know about the night I met my wife.
My fingers stopped.
The charity event.
The champagne trays.
The corridor.
His question about my shoes.
I remembered it perfectly.
But the letter described something I had completely forgotten.
She wasn’t supposed to be serving that room.
I frowned.
What did that mean?
I read the next paragraph.
She had been asked to fill in because another woman failed to arrive. That woman was carrying something for me.
I looked up.
“What?”
The solicitor said nothing.
I read faster.
A file.
My heart started beating harder.
A file containing evidence that someone inside my company had been stealing from me for almost nine years.
His son slowly lifted his head.
His daughter sat back down.
I looked at both of them.
Neither spoke.
The third letter was shorter.
Only one sentence.
I didn’t meet my wife by accident.
I stared at it.
Then I looked at the solicitor.
“You’re saying he arranged for me to be there?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
The solicitor reached into the wooden box.
He removed a small photograph.
He slid it across the desk.
It was old.
Black and white.
A crowded charity hall.
People standing around tables.
And there I was.
Twenty-six years old.
Except I wasn’t twenty-six.
I was twenty-three.
And standing beside me was my father.
A man who had been dead for nine years.
I couldn’t speak.
I turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting on the back.
My husband’s.
She doesn’t remember this night.
Below it was another sentence.
That’s because someone made sure she wouldn’t.
The room seemed to tilt.
I looked at his daughter.
For the first time since I had walked into the office, she wasn’t angry.
She looked frightened.
“Dad never told us about that.”
The solicitor reached into the box again.
“There are eight more letters.”
He placed them in front of me.
Then he said something that made the room go completely silent.
“Mrs. Vale, your husband didn’t leave you his fortune.”
He pushed the final envelope toward me.
“He left you the truth about why your father died.”
I stared at the envelope.
My name was written across it.
And beneath my name were five words: