Nia chose a table outside the public market for the conversation with Cal. The square was busy but the tables were close together. Leonie had come because Nia asked her to; she sat a few paces away, close enough to hear them over the market noise. She knew Cal might resent the witness. Nia had not asked her to negotiate.
Cal arrived with a paper folder under his arm. He greeted Nia as though they had met for lunch by arrangement, then noticed Leonie. He did not greet her. He set the folder on the table, closed, and ordered coffee from the market window. Nia waited while he paid for it. She did not let him make the folder the first thing she reached for.
“You told Ada there are more letters,” Nia said.
“There are.”
“Let me see them.”
Cal opened the folder. Leonie could see several envelopes from where she sat, addressed in the same slanting hand as the three Nia had shown aboard. He took one out and handed it to Nia. She read the name and date, then slid a finger under the flap. Cal put his hand over the remaining stack.
“They're yours to read,” he said. “I want to talk before you walk away with them.”
Nia looked at his hand, not his face. “You had years to talk.”
“I did. I told you what I thought Miriam would do to you. I should have told you she wrote. I was afraid every letter would pull you toward someone who could leave again.”
“You kept the first one,” Nia said. “What about the second?”
Cal looked at the open folder. “By then I'd told you she hadn't written. I could have given you the next letter and told you I'd been wrong. Instead I put it with the first. It got harder every year.”
“Did you open them?”
Cal looked at the flap of the sample Nia held. “The first one. I wanted to know whether she told you where to find her.”
“Did she?”
“She gave Inez's name. She said you could answer there. After that, I could see the year on each envelope. I knew enough to put it away.”
Nia pulled one corner of the sample envelope from beneath her hand. “You knew enough for yourself.”
Cal squared the envelopes so their dates faced inward.
“You said it got harder every year,” Nia said. “Harder for me?”
“For both of us.”
Nia pressed the sample envelope against the table with one finger. “I was living in your house. You had breakfast with me on the days those came.”
“I did.”
“You would ask if I had homework. You'd drive me to the print shop when I first got the job. I could have been angry at her and loved you. You decided I couldn't manage both.”
“I was afraid she'd take every question you brought home and make me the answer to it,” Cal said. “I knew you'd ask why she left. I didn't know how to tell you what it was like living with someone who could be kind at breakfast and absent by night.”
“You think I didn't see both?” Nia said. “She left. You stayed. You also put my name on a stack you decided I couldn't read.”
Cal rubbed the sleeve of his cup. “I nearly told you about the first one. You were at the kitchen table filling in an application. I had the letter in a drawer beside me.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked if you wanted another cup of tea.”
“I remember. I thought you wanted to know whether I needed help with the application.” Nia looked at the folder. “You were sitting next to a choice I didn't know I had.”
Cal lifted his hand. Nia still did not reach for the other envelopes.
“I knew what it was like to wait for Miriam to come back into a room,” Cal said. He looked at the folder. “That isn't an answer to why I took your mail.”
Nia opened the envelope she held and unfolded the page. She read the date aloud: 2022, the year she turned twenty. She scanned the first paragraph, then went back to its beginning. Leonie saw her hold the page closer to the light from the coffee window.
“She says she doesn't know whether I want another letter,” Nia said. “She says she remembers me drawing the rooms in houses we passed. She drew one too, from memory, but she won't send it unless I ask.” She turned the page. There was a small sketch on the back after all, a room with one wide window. Nia laughed once without humor. “She couldn't help sending it.”
Cal leaned forward. “That's how she was. She made a beautiful offer and put it in your hands to answer. You were twenty. You needed a mother who would show up.”
“I needed a chance to know she asked.” Nia kept the sheet open. “If she'd left again, I would have known she came back once.”
“The room in the drawing,” Cal said. “You made one like that from a shoe box. You put a window in the wrong wall, and we had to cut another.”
“It was a delivery box. You said the wall was wrong because the door would open into the stairs. Miriam said the stairs could go outside.”
Cal looked at the sketch Nia had laid down. “I remember us making it after she left.”
“We made another one after she left. The first was all three of us.” Nia held the paper so he could see the wide window. “She remembers the first room. You remember the second. I remembered both rooms. You just made the first sound as if it never happened.”
Cal moved his hand from the folder. For a moment Leonie thought he would push the stack across. Instead he squared the edges. “You said you weren't ready to see Miriam yesterday. I can take you to a place outside town where you could ask her to come today. I can ask Inez to pass the invitation.”
Nia raised her eyes. “She hasn't agreed to that.”
“I know. We can ask.”
“You don't know where she is.”
“I know where a message can reach her. You can call her from there. She doesn't have to come to this square with everyone watching.”
“What is the place?” Nia said.
“A small house near the old road. My sister's friend has the key. It's quieter than a café.”
“I told Miriam I wasn't ready to meet yesterday. I didn't tell you I wanted a private house today.”
“You said you wanted the rest of the letters. They're here. I'll give you the bundle when we go. I want one conversation where you aren't watching Leonie for a sign of what to think.”
“Put them on the table. I'll stay and talk.”
“I'm leaving Westhaven tonight,” Cal said. “You can come now, or I take them home.”
“You could leave them with me,” Nia said.
“You'll take them and go.”
“Maybe. That's what happens when you give me my mail.”
Cal closed the folder, though Nia still held the one sample. “I didn't come to watch you carry them to Miriam without hearing why I kept them.”
“You're telling me why.”
“I can say a sentence here while you watch the bus stop. I want one room where you can ask everything you've been saving and I don't have Leonie at the next table.”
Nia stood. Leonie put her hands flat on her own table so she wouldn't rise too. Nia looked toward the bus stop, then at the unopened years under Cal's arm. He made no move to follow her.
Nia sat again, angling the chair so she could see the car. “You still haven't told me what changes at the house.”
Cal looked at Leonie. “I can finish a sentence.”
“You've finished plenty.” Nia laid the sample letter flat on the table. “And you still have the rest.”
Nia kept her hand on the sample letter as she set her terms. “One conversation. At the address you give me. The letters are mine as soon as we're in the car, before we leave town. I can read them there or on the way. I decide whether to call Miriam. If I ask you to stop, you stop.”
Cal drew his hand away from the folder. “Yes.”
“You'll bring me back,” Nia said.
“Yes.”
“And stop if I ask. Before we get there.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Yes.”
“Write the address.”
He wrote it on a receipt from the coffee window. Nia read it and took out her phone. She photographed the receipt and the plate of his car across the street. Then she stood and came to Leonie's table with the envelope still in her hand.
“I may go,” Nia said. “I want you to have the address.”
“He tried to take you to Moss Point after you said no,” Leonie said. “He held the letters for years. I don't trust him to keep this bargain. You can demand the papers here and walk away.”
“I did. He won't hand them over here. If I walk away, he takes the folder with him; he's leaving Westhaven tonight. I can ask someone else to get it, but after years of telling me there was nothing, he can deny these too. I've seen the dates. They're here now. Miriam sounded relieved when I postponed. I want to read what she wrote in those missing years before I sit across from her.”
Nia went on before Leonie could answer. “I want one conversation too. I want to ask whether he read the year I turned eighteen before he decided I wouldn't handle it. I want to ask whether he noticed I stopped bringing Miriam up because I thought it hurt him.”
Leonie looked back at Cal. He sat with his cup between both hands. “You can ask him here.”
“He'll give me one sentence here and protect the folder. At the house he may do the same. I'm not pretending I'll make him truthful by going. But if he gives me the papers in the car, I have them whether he answers or not.”
Nia showed Leonie the receipt and the car photograph. “This is where he says we're going. I'll text when he gives me the bundle and again when we get there. If I don't, call me. If I say I want out and he doesn't stop, I will message you where I am.”
“I can come in another car.”
“No. That turns my reading into an escort. I want you to know where I am, not follow us.”
Leonie copied the car, address, and expected arrival time onto a market receipt. Nia corrected one digit on the plate.
Nia returned to Cal and handed back the sample to go with the stack. She stood beside his chair until he rose with the folder.
They walked to the car with the folder under Cal's arm. Nia got in on her own but left the passenger door open. Cal sat behind the wheel and handed her the folder. She checked the envelopes against the stack he had shown at the table, put the folder in her bag, and sent Leonie a message: I have them. We haven't moved yet. Only then did she close the door. Leonie watched the car leave, wrote down the time, and kept the phone where she could hear it.