I finally broke down. After several minutes, I asked the question that had troubled me since opening her letter.
“Did her husband know?”
William hesitated.
“No. Darla never told him about the cancer. She was planning to divorce him when they returned from the trip.”
That answer opened another wound.
“Why?”
William shook his head.
“That part wasn’t mine to tell.”
I drove home with the locket against my chest and countless questions following me. If Darla had planned to leave her husband, why had she boarded a plane with him, and why had she trusted me with the package instead of the father of her children?
At the bottom of her letter, I noticed a sentence I had missed the first time.
“It’s better for some truths to remain buried. Take care of the kids, Mom.”
That night, I barely slept. The following evening, while tucking Molly into bed, her drawing book slipped from her hands and fell open. Inside was a picture of four children, two adults labeled Mommy and Daddy, and another woman standing beside them.
Above that woman, Molly had written two words.
Mommy 2.
“Sweetheart, who is Mommy 2?” Molly answered as casually as though I had asked her about a cartoon character.
“That’s the lady who used to come over when Mommy was at work.”
“What lady?”
“The one Daddy would hug.”
