The next morning I woke before sunrise.
I made coffee, sat at the kitchen table and opened Daniel's notebooks.
I started with the oldest.
Most entries were exactly what I expected.
Weather.
Pruning dates.
Fertilizer.
Measurements.
Occasional complaints about the neighbor's cat.
Then I found the strange entry.
It was written three years ago.
No heading.
No explanation.
Just a date and a sentence.
Ask M. about the blue house before winter.
I stared at it.
M.
Monica.
I knew immediately.
But what was the blue house?
I turned the page.
Nothing.
I checked the pages before it.
Nothing.
After it.
Nothing.
I searched the other notebooks.
The same phrase appeared twice.
Blue house.
No address.
No explanation.
I closed the notebook and called Luke.
He answered after several rings.
“Hello?”
“Do you know anything about a blue house?”
Silence.
Then, “What blue house?”
“I don't know. Daniel wrote about it.”
Luke breathed out slowly.
“My grandmother had one.”
I sat upright.
“Where?”
“Outside town.”
“Does it still exist?”
“I think so.”
“Do you know the address?”
“Yes.”
Twenty minutes later, Luke was standing at my front door.
He had brought the letter from Daniel and an old photograph.
In the photograph was a small blue house with peeling paint.
I recognized it immediately.
Not because I had ever been there.
Because Daniel had a photograph of it.
I had seen it years ago.
I had assumed it was some childhood house.
“That's it,” Luke said.
“Why would Daniel write about it?”
“My grandmother owned it.”
I looked at him.
“Your grandmother?”
“My mother's mother.”
“What happened there?”
“I don't know.”
“You never asked?”
“Mom wouldn't talk about it.”
We drove there together.
I left Ben and Lily with my sister.
The road narrowed as we left town.
The houses became farther apart.
Finally, we turned onto a gravel lane.
The blue house stood at the end.
The paint was almost gray now.
One shutter hung crooked.
The yard was overgrown.
Luke stopped the car.
“It's smaller than I remember.”
“You've been here?”
“When I was little.”
“Who lived here?”
“My grandmother.”
“Is she still alive?”
“No.”
We walked toward the porch.
The front door was locked.
Luke tried a key.
It opened.
Inside, the air smelled of dust and old wood.
Furniture remained under white sheets.
A clock had stopped at 2:17.
I walked slowly through the rooms.
Nothing looked connected to Daniel.
Then Luke stopped.
“There's a room upstairs.”
We followed him.
He opened a door.
Inside was a small desk.
On it sat an old metal box.
Luke looked at me.
“My grandmother told me never to open it.”
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
He opened it.
Inside were letters.
Photographs.
Receipts.
And a hospital bracelet.
I picked up the bracelet.
The name was written in faded ink.
Luke.
Twenty-seven years old?
No.
The date was twenty-seven years ago.
Luke had been born here.
I looked at him.
“This is from the hospital.”
He nodded.
“My mother gave birth to me here.”
I stared at the bracelet.
“Why here?”
Luke's face tightened.
“She didn't want anyone to know.”
There were more documents.
A birth certificate.
A handwritten note.
And a photograph of Daniel.
He was sitting at the kitchen table in this very house.
I felt my stomach drop.
“When was this taken?”
Luke looked at the back.
“Two days before I was born.”
I couldn't speak.
Daniel had been here.
He had known Monica was pregnant.
He had known.
I looked at the photograph again.
He looked younger.
Tired.
Worried.
But not confused.
The letter beside the photograph explained more.
Daniel had written to Monica that he wanted to acknowledge the child.
He had offered to marry her.
He had offered to help raise him.
He had written that he loved her.
Then, at the bottom, a different handwriting appeared.
Monica's.
One sentence.
You chose her already.
I closed my eyes.
So that was it.
The secret wasn't that Daniel didn't know.
The secret was that Monica had made sure he believed she wanted nothing from him.
But that wasn't all.
There was another letter.
This one was dated years later.
Daniel had written that he had seen a child in town who looked like him.
He asked whether Monica had told the boy anything.
Her answer was one line.
Leave us alone.
I looked at Luke.
He was reading over my shoulder.
His face had gone pale.
“My whole life,” he whispered.
I put the letter down.
“She made him stay away.”
Luke stepped back.
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
He sat on the floor.
I crouched beside him.
“She was angry.”
“That doesn't explain twenty-seven years.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Did he really try?”
“Yes.”
Luke rubbed both hands over his face.
“I thought he abandoned me.”
“He didn't.”
“How do you know?”
I showed him the letters.
“He kept trying.”
Luke began to cry.
Not loudly.
Just a few tears slipping down his face while he stared at the papers.
I sat beside him.
We stayed there for several minutes.
Then he said something that made me look up.
“There was one more letter.”
“What?”
“My grandmother told me there was.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
We searched the box again.
Nothing.
Then Luke noticed a loose board beneath the desk.
He pulled it up.
A second envelope was hidden underneath.
My hands were trembling when I opened it.
The letter was from Daniel.
It had been written six years ago.
He wrote that he had learned Luke was living in town.
He wrote that he had wanted to approach him.
But he had stopped because he feared causing damage to a young man's life.
He wrote that Monica had told him Luke wanted nothing to do with him.
That sentence made me stop.
“Did Luke ever say that?”
Luke shook his head.
“No.”
Daniel had been lied to again.
At the bottom of the letter, he had written:
If he ever comes looking for me, tell him I never stopped wondering.
I folded the paper.
Luke pressed his fist against his mouth.
“He wondered about me.”
“Yes.”
“All those years.”
“Yes.”
We returned home before dark.
Monica was waiting outside her house.
She saw our faces.
She knew.
“What did you find?”
I held up the envelope.
“You lied to Daniel.”
She closed her eyes.
Luke stepped out of the car.
“Why?”
Monica didn't answer.
“You told him I didn't want him.”
“I was afraid.”
“You told him I wanted nothing to do with him.”
“I was angry.”
“You let me believe he abandoned me.”
“I know.”
Luke's voice broke.
“I spent my entire life hating a man who was trying to find me.”
Monica began crying.
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You were protecting yourself.”
She had no answer.
I handed Luke the letter.
He looked at his mother.
“I don't know how to forgive you.”
Monica nodded.
“You don't have to.”
That was the first time I believed she understood the damage.
Not because she cried.
Because she stopped asking to be absolved.
That night, I put Daniel's notebooks back in the drawer.
The garden was dark outside.
I thought about the sentence he had written.
If I don't get to see another harvest, Claire should know the tree can survive a hard winter.
At the time, I had assumed he meant the tree.
Now I wasn't sure.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: The More I Read Daniel’s Last Notebook, the Clearer It Became That He Had Been Preparing for a Conversation He Never Lived to Have
Twelve Days After Daniel Died, I Found My Neighbor on the Wrong Side of Our Fence With Bags Full of Fruit
Part 6 of 12
