Chapter 23: The Letter

October 2023

Bob wrote them on a quiet Tuesday in October, the kind of crisp morning when the light turns gold early and the house smells of coffee and woodsmoke.

He told no one.

He rose before dawn, left the bed full of warm, sleeping women, and went to his office (the one room they rarely entered without permission).

Three envelopes. Three sheets of heavy cream paper. One fountain pen Mary had given him in 1995.

He wrote Susan’s first.

When he finished, his hand shook so badly the last line bled ink.

He sealed it with red wax and the old Marine Corps signet ring he hadn’t worn since Vietnam.

Then Nawana’s.

Then Alicia’s.

He carried them to the bedroom, placed them in the small fire safe bolted to the back of the closet, and locked it with the combination only he knew.

Then he crawled back into bed, pulled three bodies close, and slept like a man who had just buried something alive.

The letters stayed hidden for two more years.

Until the morning in late October 2025 when the cancer came back (quiet, sneaky, merciless) and the safe had to be opened.

Susan opened hers first.

She sat on the edge of the bed alone (Bob already in the hospital, the others downstairs making tea they wouldn’t drink).

The envelope was heavy in her hands.

She broke the wax seal with fingers that hadn’t stopped trembling since the doctor said “stage four.”

The paper unfolded like a prayer.

Susan’s letter – in Bob’s careful, slanted handwriting