Evelyn wanted to respond.
Instead, Noah stood.
He walked slowly toward the blue folder and removed a sealed envelope.
He handed it to her.
“This was meant for you.”
Inside was a letter written twelve days earlier.
Noah wrote that he was exhausted from waking every morning feeling guilty for being alive.
He wrote that he did not want to die.
He simply wanted to stop believing that he was the reason his mother had lost her sister.
Evelyn could not finish reading.
She knelt in front of him.
But she did not touch him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never should have said those words. I never should have convinced myself that sending money meant I was present. And I never should have called your pain ‘drama’ when you needed me.”
Noah cried silently.
“I don’t need you to quit your job,” he said. “I need to stop feeling as if there is always something more important than listening to me.”
