Mr. Atlas.
Not Dad. Not father.
Still, my heart pounded.
Matilda pushed the tape into my hands. “He said you’d understand once you saw it. But don’t wait, okay? If you wait, it might be too late.”
“Too late for what, Matilda?”
My heart pounded.
She looked down. “For me to believe him.”
Then she walked back into the rain.
I didn’t chase her. I just stood there holding my dead husband’s secret while Morgan helped the little girl into her car.
At home, I didn’t change out of my black dress. I didn’t eat any of the food laid out downstairs. I just locked myself in my bedroom with the tape on the bed.
I stared at it until Morgan called for the sixth time.
She walked back into the rain.
I let it ring.
Then I dragged out the old VCR, hooked it up with shaking hands, and pressed play.
The screen flickered blue.
He was sitting in his workshop behind our garage, wearing his green sweater with the stretched cuff. His face looked thinner, or maybe I had refused to see it.
“Camille,” he said, looking straight into the camera. “Before you get angry, remember one thing. I never hid this because I didn’t trust you. I hid it because I loved you too much to make you grieve the life we never had all over again.”
The screen flickered blue.
I covered my mouth.
“Her name is Matilda,” he continued. “She lives at Willow House, a group home not too far from us. Morgan volunteers there on Sundays. She once mentioned they needed readers, so I went. Then I went again. Somehow, Sunday became the only day I stopped feeling useless.”
“No,” I whispered.
“I know what you may think,” Atlas said. “But Matilda isn’t my daughter. I was never unfaithful to you, my love. I never wanted another life.”
“Sunday became the only day I stopped feeling useless.”
My shoulders folded.
“But I did lie. Every time I said I was taking a long walk, I was going to Willow House. I told myself I was protecting you. Maybe I was protecting myself too.”
On the screen, he rubbed his forehead. He always did that when he hated what he had to say.
“Matilda was six when I met her. She beat me at checkers and called me slow to my face. I loved her immediately.”
“But I did lie.”
A laugh broke out of me, then turned into a sob.
“She’s had too many adults leave, Cami,” he said. “So I made a promise I shouldn’t have made alone. I told her that if I couldn’t come anymore, my wife would know what to do.”
I stood so fast the TV remote fell. “Atlas, no.”
“I’m not asking you to be her mother,” he said. “I’m asking you to meet her. Melissa at Willow House knows everything. Morgan knows how to get there. Be angry with me. You have every right. But not them. Please don’t let my cowardice become one more adult disappearing from Matilda’s life.”
“She’s had too many adults leave.”
The tape crackled.
Then my husband leaned closer.
“You once told me you married me, not a future. I believed you. But I never told you that I still mourned being needed by a child. You were enough, Camille. You were always enough. I just had this room in my heart I didn’t know how to close.”
He swallowed.
“If there’s any good left in the secret I kept, it’s her.”
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