at least some of what her mother must have felt when she’d first read this long-awaited letter. Relief that he’d finally written, devastated that he was trying to make her let go. He didn’t appear to know anything about the pregnancy and her mother must have been almost full term by then. She wondered if he’d ever known about his son, and knew she’d feel heartsick for Jamie if he hadn’t.
What was it going to be like for her brother once he knew the whole story?
Joely looked at her mother sitting in her chair, typing into the computer for short bursts and occasionally stopping. Beyond what she was seeing, at a distance too far to reach, was a beautiful young girl of fifteen, sixteen by the time this letter had arrived, sitting or lying on a bed in her parents’ home poring over every word of this letter, a hand on her pregnant belly, an unbreakable connection to the man she loved.
Had Jamie been conceived the last time young Marianne and David had been together?
Did it matter when it was apparent that his parents couldn’t have loved one another more?
Joely’s eyes moved to Freda, whose attention appeared to be fixed on the coffee table in front of her, her hands opening and closing as though itching to hold onto something, or maybe to let it go. How was she going to react to this letter, for surely once she’d read her brother’s words she could be in no further doubt about Marianne’s story?
Or could she?
This was the worrying thing about Freda: she was as unknowable, as unpredictable as the future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As Joely picked up the next letter, she was aware of the deep pain in her shoulder pounding in time with her heartbeat and spreading its ache into her neck and her head. It was draining her, making her feel nauseous again, but she was determined to go on. However, she didn’t start reading straight away, instead she kept a discreet and cautious eye on Freda as the older woman’s eyes moved quickly over the pages she was holding.
Joely saw her flinch, and her jaw tightened for a fraction of a second before she appeared to return to the start of the letter. She read it again, more slowly this time, taking in all it was telling her, absorbing it into what she already knew. Someone else’s story was trying to erase her own, and her own brother was providing a stronger and more honest voice to the events Freda had presumed to know so well.
Eventually, Freda put the letter aside as if it had meant nothing, changed nothing – maybe she was telling herself it wasn’t real. Whatever was in her mind, her eyes were unreadable as she stared at Marianne, who was so engrossed in her task that she seemed to have forgotten anyone else was in the room.
Joely fumbled with the next letter and closed her eyes for a moment as a spasm of pain flared through the break in her shoulder. When eventually it receded, she felt her mind start to clear and as she breathed more freely she began to read.
Oh, Marianne, Marianne,
Why have you not told me this before? Why has no one allowed me to know that I am to be a father? Are my parents aware of this? Why would they keep it from me?
You and I have created a child. I want to write those words a thousand times and shout them out loud in joy and in fear.
Since receiving your letter I have experienced more heartache and longing than I’d ever imagined possible – and most of the time I’ve been in here those emotions have been my constant companions. There have been many others but those two, along with a love as deep as oceans, are what connect me to you.
Yes, my angel, my heart is as connected to you as you say yours is to me. I have resisted telling you this because I didn’t want to tie you to me, to give you hope for a future that cannot be the way you want it to be. We will discuss that another time, but right now all that matters is the baby and how much his or her arrival will mean to us both.
You say you are due to give birth sometime in the next two weeks and it is half-killing me to know that I can’t be with you. I am already picturing myself holding it