| |
––––––––
April 14, 2005
Dear, sweet, darling Ruthie,
How I’ve longed to reach out to you. All these years, I knew you didn’t want to see me or hear from me, and who could blame you? I did that to you.
But I never forgot about you. I never stopped looking to see how you were or where you were. It was easier with Bobby being married to your sister, and they told me what they could. I cried the day you were married, but I knew you had likely done the same. I hope he was a good father to our child. Our child deserved a better parent than I could ever be. I tried so hard to hold my composure when they told me your next child David was born, and then Beth and Mike in the following years. I marked all their names down in a journal just so I could feel a little nearer to you. Every time Bobby told me news of how you were, I would die inside. He offered to stop telling me these things, but I begged him not to. He was my only link to you. He was the only way I could feel you still in my life. I needed that. I needed you.
Bobby passed away a couple years ago. It was then that I had to hire a private investigator to check in on you to see how you were doing. I’d known of Leland’s passing in 1995, and though you didn’t see me there, I attended the funeral. I stood toward the back of the crowd, blending in with his children from his previous marriage. You probably would have thought I was just one of them if you’d seen me. That was what I wanted you to think at the time. I cried as hard as any of them did, but not for the loss of Leland. I cried for the pain I saw on your face at being left all alone once more. I cried because I couldn’t reach out to you and tell you how dearly I loved you. I cried because I felt no right to tell you my own wife had died the year before. And I cried because I couldn’t tell you that, though I’d eventually learned to love Virginia, I never loved her the way I always loved and longed for you. And I swore I’d never tell you that she knew about you the whole time.
With Bobby and Jonnie both gone now, I have no connection to you anymore. I felt that part of my insides had been torn out and scattered from the plane we used to fly. My heart was missing, and everything I’d ever cared for was with it. My own children never knew of you until last month when I told my oldest son of my one true love in a moment of weakness. He asked me why I would leave you the way I did, and it was the first time I’d ever told anyone. I wished so many times that I had told you, but I didn’t know how.
Mother was waiting for me when I left your home that night. She and Father were so angry at me for having defied them to keep seeing you behind their backs. When they told me that I was to be married the following morning, I was so angry I screamed at them both. I couldn’t help it. I told them that you were pregnant and that I was getting married, that we were going to be married right away.
But Mother told me that she knew. I didn’t know what she meant at first, but she told me everything. The night I got home from helping to get rid of Willie’s body, my mother had seen me walking up the drive covered in blood. She knew something was wrong. She started following Bobby and me everywhere we went. That’s how she found out I’d been seeing you behind her back. But she followed Bobby and found out he was seeing Jonnie, too. And one night when they were in the home, and your little sisters had fallen asleep, she overheard the two of them talking about how they’d disposed of Willie’s body and buried your Mama in the backyard. She swore to me that if I didn’t do every little thing she told me to do right in that moment, she was going to tell the police and get Jonnie sent to the electric chair for murder. And she’d have me sent to prison with her for conspiracy. I knew she could do it. My uncle Henry was the Cleburne County Judge. I couldn’t let that happen to Jonnie.She’d been so good to my brother. You loved her so much. So when my mother told me to write you the letter, I had to be as awful as possible to you so that you never tried to seek me out. By the time Mother died in 1962, we had both moved on with our lives, and I couldn’t take anything back. I never even told Jonnie and Bobby the truth. They would have lived their lives in fear of being found out. I don’t know why I finally told my boy, but I was glad that I did. If it hadn’t been for him, I might not have written this letter at all. He told me that you deserved to know the truth. I just happen to think he’s right.
Ruthie, we’ve lived most of our lives in pain, being separated for this long. I’ve loved you my whole life, and what I did, I did for you and for our child. I hate that it happened, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it or take it back, but I’m reaching out now because I feel the need to be near you, stronger than it’s ever been. My wife passed on some time ago. Your husband did, too. After eighty years of waiting, we finally have the freedom to be together. I can come to where you are to be with you, or you can come to me, I don’t care. But I miss you, I love you, and I need to be with you. After all these years, we could live out what little time we have remaining, finally happy and finally together. Please say yes, Ruthie. I’m begging you. Please, forgive an old man. I love you dearly.
Always, Arthur.
I mopped at my eyes, both horrified and overjoyed that Arthur had finally come back into her life. I didn’t have to wonder for long if she forgave him. Taped onto the back of the last page of his letter was a little sticky note with the same handwriting on it.
––––––––
“She forgave me.”
Beneath that was taped one last photo of the two of them, relatively recent, him in a navy blue suit and her in a beautiful white dress holding an enormous bouquet of bright red roses.