Chapter 16
Estelle opened Brennan’s newest letter three weeks later.
Not the oldest.
Not all of them.
One.
Cassian discovered because he came for breakfast and found the envelope beside her plate.
His mother was eating toast.
Proper toast.
Butter.
Jam.
Coffee Greta considered too strong.
The letter had been folded into thirds.
Cassian looked at it.
Estelle looked at him.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
He sat across from her.
“What did he write?”
“That is dangerously close to asking.”
Cassian nodded.
“Right.”
They ate for another minute.
Then Estelle pushed the letter toward him.
“I want you to read this one.”
Only because she wanted.
That distinction had become important enough that neither commented on it anymore.
Brennan’s handwriting was less confident than Cassian remembered.
Mother,
I have rewritten this letter five times because every version sounded like I was trying to explain myself until what I did became reasonable.
It wasn’t.
I knew you were forgetting things sometimes.
I used that fact because it made the larger lie easier to build.
That sentence stopped Cassian.
Brennan continued.
I did tell myself I was protecting the company.
I believed Cassian’s restructuring would weaken the family.
I believed independent directors would eventually treat our name as a liability.
I believed you were too loyal to Cassian to see what he was giving away.
Those beliefs were real.
They did not give me the right to decide that your judgment no longer counted.
I wanted two doctors to say what I already needed them to say.
So I helped create the conditions in which you would look confused.
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
The next paragraph was worse.
When Lavinia began restricting food more aggressively, I knew.
I told myself it would last only until the evaluation.
When she humiliated you, I did not stop her.
I did not need to agree with every cruel thing she did to become responsible for allowing it.
There was no request to come home.
No request for money.
No request that Estelle remember him as a frightened eight-year-old during thunderstorms.
The final lines said:
I am still your son.
That does not mean you owe me access to you.
I am trying to understand both sentences at the same time.
Brennan.
Cassian placed the letter down.
Estelle drank coffee.
“What do you think?”
He almost answered:
I think he is manipulating you.
Then stopped.
That would make the letter his problem to solve.
“I believe parts of it.”
“Which?”
“The parts matching evidence.”
“Very romantic.”
“I’m not trying to be.”
“What about the rest?”
Cassian looked at the handwriting.
“I don’t know.”
Estelle nodded.
“Good.”
He frowned.
“Good?”
“I’m tired of everyone knowing exactly what another person means.”
Fair.
She folded the letter again.
Cassian looked toward the drawer holding the others.
“You going to read those?”
“Maybe.”
“When?”
She stared.
He raised both hands.
“Sorry.”
A week later she opened another.
Then none for two months.
Brennan continued writing.
Sometimes every three weeks.
Sometimes longer.
Estelle did not answer.
That remained her choice.
Then one afternoon she dictated three sentences to Rebecca.
Brennan,
I read two of your letters.
I am not ready to write more.
Do not stop your treatment because I am not answering.
Estelle.
Cassian read the draft only because Estelle asked him.
“You want to send it?”
“Yes.”
“Why the treatment sentence?”
She looked irritated.
“Because I know my son.”
Cassian understood.
Brennan had spent much of his life measuring improvement through approval from people above him.
Father.
Family elders.
Cassian.
Now perhaps Estelle.
She refused to become the prize at the end of his rehabilitation.
Rebecca mailed the letter.
Brennan answered once.
Understood.
Then returned to his ordinary schedule of correspondence.
No pressure.
No count of unanswered messages.
No attempt to make restraint itself impressive.
At Sunday dinner, Estelle ate cake.
Misplaced her reading glasses.
Found them beside the newspaper.
Nobody turned the mistake into a neurological event.
The letters remained in the drawer.
Some opened.
May you like
Some not.
They had stopped being demands simply because Estelle had stopped treating arrival as obligation.
