Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar, #2)(38)

I kissed the top of her hair. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is. I wrote them. And I should have gotten rid of them years ago.”

“No.” Molly shook her head as she went back to her seat. “I’m glad you didn’t. This one . . . I needed to read this one.”

“Why?” I took the chair by her side, toying with the side of the letter.

I didn’t want to open it again. I didn’t want to read it and remember. Because it wasn’t fair that she’d had to relive it and I hadn’t, I slid the paper across the table and opened the folds, reading the words I’d written in agony years ago.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed the letter, hoping the emotions would stay on the page and in the past where they belonged.

“I need to tell you something.” Molly blew out a long breath. “Poppy and I were talking the other day. She wondered if Jamie’s death was the reason we split up. She thought if she’d handled it better, we might still be together.”

“Damn it.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I hate that she feels that way. She wasn’t the reason we split up.”

“That’s what I told her too. But ever since, I’ve been thinking. All these letters . . .” She pointed to the paper. “They’ve made me think. For so many years, I’ve tried to pinpoint it.”

“Pinpoint what?”

She paused. “The beginning of the end of us.”

I rocked back in my chair. “You think this was it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t. But now that I’ve read this letter, yes. I do.”

How could this letter make her think this was what had caused our split? “I’m not following you. We had some good years after this. We had Kali then Max after this.”

“You said it in your letter. Everything changed. After Jamie died, everything changed.”

“His death wasn’t the reason we split up.”

“Then what was? We were different after his death.”

I opened my mouth to answer but shut it when the words didn’t come. What had caused our divorce? What had taken us from a place where all I needed to get through one of the hardest moments of my life was one glance at her?

“I don’t know.”

“It wasn’t just one thing,” she said. “But after this, the bad days started.”

“What bad days?”

“The bad days. We conceived Kali during makeup sex. We’d both been so tired and exhausted. You were spending nearly every second with Poppy, making sure she was . . . well, you know.”

Alive.

My parents had gone back to Alaska after the funeral. They’d each had to work because . . . life went on. Except for Poppy, it hadn’t. She’d spent months nearly comatose.

Poppy had slipped so far into a depression, nothing had helped. Nothing I said would make her smile. Nothing I did made her open up and talk. She didn’t even cry.

Without Jamie, she’d lost her heart. So I’d fought. I’d fought hard for her. I’d called her constantly. When she didn’t answer, I went to check on her. I stayed late at her house, lying next to her on the couch until her brain would shut down and she finally fell asleep. Then I carried her to bed. Day after day. Week after week. I spent every minute of the day fearing for my sister’s life.

Everything else was shut out, Molly especially. She took over a lot at Alcott and covered when I needed to be with Poppy. She made sure my laundry was done and the lawn was mowed. She ran our lives.

In return, I came home from Poppy’s house miserable. I snapped at Molly, taking out my frustrations about Jamie’s death on the one person I loved the most.

“What did we fight about that night?” I asked. “I can’t remember.”

She grinned. “The price of Swedish aspen.”

“That’s right. For the Bexter project. God, he was an asshole.”

“He sure was. That was the first and only time a client made me cry.”

Alan Bexter was a guy who’d moved to Bozeman on a whim, a trust-fund kid who’d thought paying full price was beneath him. It was a big project and worth it for Alcott to tackle, even after giving the guy a discount. I’d made a verbal agreement with Alan for a reduced price on the trees he’d wanted to line his driveway.

I’d been in the middle of that project when Jamie was murdered.

By the time we’d wrapped it up, weeks had passed. Molly was doing all the billing for Alcott and she’d sent Bexter his final invoice. All fifty-six Swedish aspen had been itemized at full price.

Bexter had called Molly, ripping her up one side and down the other. Then he’d called me, giving me an ass-chewing before recommending I fire my bookkeeper. The idiot hadn’t put two and two together to realize he’d been talking about my wife.

“I swear I told you about the price change,” I said.

“And I swear you didn’t.” The truth was a mystery. Not that it mattered now.

“Damn, that was one hell of a fight.”

She grinned. “I don’t remember who started throwing the food first.”

“You.” I chuckled. “I was shocked when you threw those noodles in my face.”