Page 1 of Letters From Victor

PROLOGUE

Frank Jr.

June 2012

There are two ways to leave a hospital: the front door and the back door.

Today I walked out the front.

Mom left by the back.

Or however the deceased are removed.

There’s something creepy about dead people’s houses. I’d been in Mom’s house earlier that morning—when she was still alive. But now that she was dead, everything felt different. Suffocating.

The deafening silence was broken only by the creak of the floorboards and the soft thud of my tennis shoes as I climbed the wooden stairs. Even though the house was empty, it seemed as though Mom’s eyes watched me from every photo on the walls.

Artistic black-and-white portraits of her from the 1940s and ’50s lined the hallway. My stepdad had been a photographer inhis free time, and Mom had always been his favorite subject. She was a bombshell—as odd as it is for a son to say.

I stopped in front of Mom’s closed bedroom door, my hand hovering over the knob. As a kid, I was never allowed in their bedroom. Even now, at sixty-four and with them both dead, it still felt wrong to go inside.

I took a deep breath and turned the knob. The door creaked open to reveal the forbidden sanctuary of my parents’ private lives. The room was dark, the curtains drawn. I flipped on the lights, illuminating the space that had been off-limits for so long.

Mom’s vanity sat in the corner, her hairbrush still strewn with tangled strands of golden hair. Even at eighty-six, she refused to go gray—always a blonde, right to the end. Her perfume bottles were neatly arranged, the scent of Chanel No. 5 lingering like a ghost in the air. I ran my fingers along the edge of the vanity, picking up a thin layer of dust. It seemed wrong that dust could settle so quickly.

I made my way to the vast walk-in closet and opened the door to a rainbow of dresses, suits, and shoes. Mom had always been sharp when it came to clothes. Her closet was a museum of fashion from the last sixty years, and several pieces were even her own designs. I ran my fingers along the silky fabrics, the beading, the embroidery. Each dress was a work of art. It was hard to believe that the woman who had worn these dresses was gone, her body lying cold and lifeless on a slab.

I was supposed to pick out a dress to take to the funeral home—something that would show off her beauty one last time. But as I pushed hangers aside, something on the top shelf caught my eye—a small wooden chest tucked behind a stack of hatboxes. It was ornately carved, the patterns intricate and worn smooth by time. I didn’t recognize it.

Curiosity edged out grief, and I pulled it down, my heart ticking faster. The lid didn’t budge—it was locked. A quick scanof the closet turned up nothing useful. No key. Just dust and silence. Reaching into my pocket, I flipped open my multi-tool and used the tiniest screwdriver to loosen the latch. A few careful turns, and the plate came free. The box creaked open.

A stack of yellowed letters tied with a faded red ribbon lay nestled atop a bed of old photographs and mementos. I carefully untied the ribbon, the delicate fabric nearly shredding in my hands. The letters were written on onion-skin paper, the ink slightly smudged but still legible. I unfolded the first one—the paper crackling with age—and began to read. The handwriting was elegant, bold, and confident. I recognized it instantly as my stepfather’s.

My darling Barbara,

I haven’t slept. Every time I close my eyes, I see you there—your smile in the candlelight, the way you reached for my hand when you thought no one was watching.

You have an uncanny way of undoing me without even trying.

I don’t know where this path leads, only that I’m already too far along to turn back.

Say you feel the same.

—V

A flush crept up my neck as I read the intimate lines. I should have stopped reading—I knew that. But the box felt like adoorway I’d already stepped through. There was no unseeing what I’d seen. No unreading those words.

I set the letter back in the box, closed the lid, and carried it downstairs. It felt heavier than it should have—like the weight of decades had settled into the wood.

The dining room was still and sunlit, the long table gleaming like it had for every Thanksgiving, every birthday, every ordinary Wednesday night. I sat at the head of the table and gently unpacked the box’s contents—letters, photographs, scraps of a life I thought I knew.

One by one, I began sorting the letters, arranging them by date. The earliest was from January 1951. I would have been two years old.

I stepped back and looked at the letters spread across the table—an entire life scattered in ink across paper, each note whispering a piece of a story I had never been told.

A forbidden love. A life stitched together with secrets, seduction, and scandal.

And the gut-punch realization that I hadn’t known my mother at all.

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