The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans - 59

June 2015 July2015 August 2015 September

Dear Daan,

Do you remember me sitting long hours at the writing desk? Here I am still as if nothing has changed . Everything has changed.

I have tried always to say exactly what I mean or to come as close to accuracy as the English language allows. Words have rarely failed me, and yet I find myself sitting down to write you and not having the slightest idea what to say .

Here I’ve put the pen to the page, but

for weeks I have considered it.

It isn’t that

I’m sorry you are dying, but we are all dying. I’m sorry you are dying with cancer—it makes it more insidious, somehow, even though it’s all a wash in the end. But cancer rather makes dying a more ravaging sort of experience you have to endure—I’d much prefer to be surprised, hit by a car struck dead by lightning or decapitated (swift; lights off; horrific, but not agonizing) and yet most of us won’t have the luxury.

There’s something I need to disclose admit to you tell you

I have a confession (never saw the value in telling you)

(What good would it do for you to know?)

I was to blame You said there was nothing to blame, but I was to blame

You have a right to know that

You were right to blame me because what happened is

What troubles me most about losing you is losing knowing you are the last person who holds my shares my memories of Gilbert knows who I was, what I was always trying to do

who I was doing my best to be . But I have to tell you something

There were times I hated you, but it was always I

I have hated myself, and that was what it was

You loved me

I did my best I tried so hard to be a good mother, good citizen, good in work, good wife, but missed the mark each time. You deserve to know that when we were at Lake Saint-Pierre

Not that we have spoken much, but it seems you’re the only person on this earth who knows me and knowing you are there is a comfort has been a comfort a great comfort and I will miss that. The things only you knew—who else will keep my memories and my stones when you are gone? But there is something you don’t know

The stone I didn’t tell you, I must

There is a massive behemoth wrecking stone I TOLD HIM TO

I did not grieve was primarily concerned with self-flagellation,

a guilt that plagues me now, even as I write

So you see, my grief was compounded by my culpability

By the time our marriage was ending ended I wasn’t in love with you anymore, but I have always loved you.

Daan, I owe you a debt for drawing close to Fiona and Bruce when I was unable. You are very good to have done that for them for me

You are a good man, a good father

At the end of things, when you left for Belgium I didn’t wonder—by that time I wasn’t in love with you—but you left my parents gave me away you walked away from me and with

But if you had known, I’ve always wondered if it would have saved us our marriage our life SAVED our life

Of course I can’t send the letter I want to send. What I want to say I cannot say. I know that, even if I wrote a letter a thousand miles long it would not be able express the universe of the human soul—my soul THE LETTERS pages and pages to what end? I cannot say. I am asking myself to what end. It doesn’t amount to anything at all, they are nothing, only paper with my scrawling endless, but it’s the way I that has been the manner by which I make meaning, I suppose writing the letters is how I but even still I even with all the writing I still don’t

I had my DNA tested, you would be surprised to learn

I am sorry. I am so, so very sorry

I am going blind, and it terrifies me. If I cannot see, what do I have?

You’re gone. I know I’ll see you soon.