Curtis would not give me a name, but he agreed to call the man and pass along mine. Walter Moore phoned back within the hour, his voice thin and careful. He was Daniel’s older brother. He told me he had stood on the riverbank the evening I threw the locket, a young man of twenty-two who could not find the courage to speak. At dawn he waded in and found it caught in the reeds. Daniel had been struck by a truck on the county road on the night of August 14, riding his bike to my house to say goodbye before his family moved. Walter tucked the wristband inside the locket, meaning to bring me both. My mother met him at the door, and he left with nothing but her shut face.
Daniel lived, Walter said, but his hip never healed right, and the family moved north before he could walk without help. For forty years Walter believed what my mother told him on that porch: that I had burned every letter and wanted no part of them. “She never wanted the truth anyway” was what he said to himself each time he thought of me. I told him I never saw a single letter. I said I had believed my mother because believing Daniel hurt worse, and that I had carried that choice through every ordinary day since. Walter was quiet so long I heard the clock above my stove again.
Daniel had died in March, he told me, and Walter had been emptying the house. He pawned the locket for forty-five dollars because he could not bear to keep it and could not bear to throw it away. He hoped a stranger might care for it. I said I was not a stranger, and I had cared for it all my life, even underwater. The next Saturday I drove four hours to his porch. He handed me a shoebox of letters in Daniel’s slanted hand, every one addressed to me, every one unsent, because Daniel had decided I had made my choice.
I read them on my own porch that evening, between the tomato plants and the dusk, one at a time. The last was dated the year my grandson was born. I did not cry the way I expected. I felt something quieter, like a long-held breath leaving. I left the dent as it was and put the locket on its chain. Then I opened it, and for the first time in forty-three years, I let the initials be true.
