A woman answered.
“Is this Rachel?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Arthur.”
A long silence followed.
Then she whispered, “Goldi’s Arthur?”
My throat tightened.
“Yes.”
Rachel began crying before I asked what had happened.
She told me that Goldi had died seven months after leaving us. She had reached out to Rachel because she had nowhere else to go.
Doctors had discovered the cancer after noticing an abnormality in her bloodwork late in her pregnancy.
Further scans revealed that it had already spread.
After she left us, all the doctors could offer her was hospice care.
Rachel also cared for her until the end.
“Why didn’t you try to find me?” I asked.
“She made me promise. She made me swear on my grandson’s name.”
“You should have let me choose for myself. All of you should have let me choose.”
“I know,” Rachel whispered. “I have regretted it every day. I have thought of you and my grandson every day.”
Leo spoke with her that afternoon.
Their first conversation lasted almost an hour.
He asked about Goldi’s childhood, her favorite food, and whether she ever spoke about him.
“Every day,” Rachel said. “Even to her last breath, you are all she spoke of.”
A few months later, the four of us went to visit Goldi’s grave.
Rachel stood beside Leo on one side.
I stood on the other.
Johnson placed white flowers beneath the headstone.
For weeks after the letter, I had barely spoken to her.
Leo kept visiting her, and eventually I understood that her 18 years of love had been genuine even though her silence had been wrong.
At the grave, Leo placed Goldi’s letter beside the flowers.
“I’m glad you loved me,” he said. “But I wish you had stayed long enough to let us love you back.”
Then I finally said the words I had carried for 18 years.
“I hated you, Goldi.”
My voice shook.
“I hated you because it was easier than admitting I still loved you.”
Rachel reached for my hand.
Goldi hadn’t abandoned us because she was heartless.
