"Why marry me, then," I finally asked. "If he had a real family out there, even a broken one — why marry a hospital volunteer he'd known for three weeks?"
Gerald pulled one final envelope from the bottom of the bag, this one addressed simply to Camille in the same careful handwriting.
"I think," Gerald said gently, "you should read that one yourself."
Camille — By the time you're reading this, I'll already be gone, and I imagine you're sitting somewhere feeling like you married a puzzle instead of a person. I'm sorry for that. I want you to know the marriage itself wasn't a lie. I meant every part of it. I simply couldn't find the right week, in three weeks, to tell you about the son I lost twenty years before I ever met you.
I made a decision that night, standing over Eleanor's body, that I still believe was the right one medically, and Desmond has never once been able to see past the eleven minutes it took him to reach the hospital. I don't blame him for the grief. I've spent two decades wishing I could have found a gentler way to say the hardest thing a father ever has to say.
