narration. It was a silent pact they had made, somewhere along the way.
“I don’t know if you’re going back to New York,” Theo said.
Kate almost laughed. “Me either,” she said.
They looked at each other for a moment. She felt like someone had reached an ice cream scoop into her chest and removed all her organs. Her new normal state, she guessed. It was impossible to imagine regrowing the innards, refilling the scooped space.
“You should read the diary,” she blurted out. “I mean, I understand why you haven’t. But you should make yourself do it. If she wanted you to.”
Theo folded his arms across his chest and studied her for a minute. Then he gave a slow, small nod. Not a nod of agreement, but a nod like he had been thinking something over and had finally come to a decision. She noticed a paper cut on one of his hands, where it gripped his sweater. The white crescents of his cuticles, the broad flat nails. She remembered him spreading her apart earlier that day, and she flushed.
“I’ll go,” she said, opening the door into the quivering green afternoon.
She was on the threshold, one foot on the wide front step, when he said, “Kate?”
She turned back. “Yeah?”
“The NDA you signed? You know it still holds.”
Nothing less than she deserved. Still, for a split second she hated him a little for saying it aloud. For pretending this was just the end of a business transaction. For acting like their relationship could be reduced to a few lines on a contract. Will not disclose, divulge, or communicate any Confidential Information. As if everything he had said to her, everything he had shared, he had done not out of some abstract sense of trust, but because he knew that she was legally bound to keep his secrets. But what about her? Her secrets had no protection.
How carefully she had orchestrated her own annihilation. How methodically she had gone about falling in love while also ensuring that he would never love her back.
“I know,” she said, before she closed the door to the Brand house for the final time.
MIRANDA
SERIES 1, Correspondence
BOX 1, Personal correspondence
FOLDER: Toby-Jarrett, Lynn (incl. 12 photocopies of letters from MB, from LTJ private collection)
* * *
November 15 1993
Dear Lynn,
I know we haven’t spoken in a long time. I know I hurt you, and even worse neglected you over the years. Maybe that letter Candace sent me about you being out of the country was a lie, was just you, desperate to get rid of me. I wouldn’t blame you.
I figure by the time you get this package, you’ll have heard the news. I’m counting on the shock prompting you to open this letter and doing what I ask you to do.
You have been so much to me. A best friend, a soulmate, a help. Sometimes I think I was never as happy as those days in college when we would hang our arms around each other’s necks and breathe in the dense city autumn, the promise of love before winter. Our futures like ripe, soft fruits.
All my later joys are corrupted. Splashed and stained by what came after. That early happiness, our happiness, that stayed safe. It is intact and shining in my mind.
That’s why I am entrusting you with this package. Keep the top part wrapped and give it to Theo, whenever you think you can be sure Jake won’t get it. I won’t go into it all now. It doesn’t really matter anymore. But someday Theo might have questions and I think maybe what is inside will help him understand.
You can open the bottom package—it’s for you. It’s a print of The Threshold, one of the last ones left from the first run.
You don’t know this, but I originally made the photo for you. Because we were both this woman once. We both stepped over, although we had different things waiting for us on the other side.
If you don’t want to keep it, I understand. You should be able to sell it for a lot of money. Prices will skyrocket after the news hits. Artists are the only people who are more valuable dead.
M
29.
KATE
The following week, Kate was driving Louise back from the East Bay when Louise reached under her arm and flipped the turn signal for her.
“Take this exit,” she said.
Kate obeyed. She had gotten accustomed to the flipping-the-turn-signal thing this week. Now that she was unemployed, her aunt had roped her into the daily gauntlet of retiree activities.