Page 73 of Leave It to Us
Stacks and stacks of letters. It made her think of the box she had upstairs in her room, the one she’d found that night she’d gone to Grandma Betty’s room to sit when she couldn’t sleep. But that box wasn’t a hatbox. It was square and the color of a tree trunk. And there’d been over a hundred letters in that box. Staring at the one Sallie was now digging through, it looked like there could be the same number of envelopes in that one too.
“Here!” Sallie said, picking up an envelope and holding it triumphantly.
Again, the Butler sisters remained silent.
Sallie pursed her lips and then removed the letter from the envelope before reading:
You’ve been a dear friend since the first day I stepped onto this island. We’ve grown close over the years so I know this is your heart’s deepest desire and that you would give anything for this opportunity. Well, I’m not asking you for anything in return, but I’d like to give you this baby to love and raise as your own.
The teakettle began whistling the moment Sallie ended that sentence. And it was a good thing too, because nobody knew what to say. Well, Tami did, and she said it: “Get the hell outta here!” She shook her head. “Are you saying my grandmother gave your mother a baby? Gaveyouto your mother?”
“How old are you?” Lana asked while Yvonne got up from the table and went to turn off the teakettle.
Tami watched as her sister turned off the fire and moved the teakettle to another burner. Then, instead of getting tea bags, mugs, and sugar, Yvonne turned right around and came to sit back at the table.
“I need you to just say what you came here to say, Sallie. Because this”—Yvonne waved her hand in front of the box—“is ... more than I feel like dealing with tonight.”
Sallie set the letter on the table beside the box and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m saying that thirty-four years ago, Daniel Butler was on this island for the summer. At the same time, a woman named Trudy was visiting. Daniel and Trudy had a fling that resulted in Trudy finding out she was pregnant, and a year later, Trudy returned to the island and left her baby on Ms.Betty’s porch with a note.”
Tears welled in Sallie’s eyes as she shook her head. “Seems all the business was done via letter back then. What a difference a real conversation could’ve made.”
“Hold the hell up! Are you saying our daddy is your daddy too?” Tami’s head was spinning, her heart slamming in her chest.
“No fucking way,” Lana said. “No. Just no.”
Yvonne was quiet another beat before she reached for the letter Sallie had put down on the table.
Sallie didn’t try to stop her; she just continued. “I’m thirty-three. My mother, Odessa, the only mother I’ve ever known, tried to have children the first fifteen years of her marriage. I didn’t learn all of this until she got sick. When Mama knew she wasn’t going to make it afterthat second round of chemo, she told me to go through her papers and find the insurance stuff. I found these letters instead.”
“Ms.Janie said your father was in love with my grandmother and that your mother knew but never said anything,” Yvonne said as she placed the letter on the table. “Is this some sort of cruel way to get back at us for whatever may have happened between them years ago?”
Sallie frowned. “You don’t believe that.”
“Well, shit, I don’t know what to believe right about now,” Tami said, because it was the truth. How had the day taken such a drastic turn?
One minute she was flying high after landing the job of her dreams; the next, she was bonding with her sisters over some damn great food in a way she hadn’t done in years and now ... this. She brought her hands to her face and scrubbed them down, hoping that when she let them fall to the table again, nobody would be sitting there and this would have all been a bad dream. Well, not the part about the job and the good food.
“What do you want?” Lana asked. “Why are you really here, telling us this tonight?”
Now Sallie grimaced. “I want the truth out, once and for all. There’s been years of lies circling around this island. More people knew about this than you can imagine, and nobody bothered to tell me. I didn’t talk to my mama much about it after she told me to keep my mouth shut. Didn’t want to upset her more than was necessary, not in her condition.” She took a deep breath and released it on a heavy sigh. “But I asked my father, and he told me the truth. Said he was tired of lying too. Had been lying for too many years about too many things.”
Tami heard her voice catch on those last words and, for just a second, let herself really hear Sallie’s voice.
“I don’t want this house,” Sallie said with a shake of her head. “I don’t want anything of Ms.Betty’s. That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have been mine, just the same. I had a right to know who my parentswere, just like you have a right to know who your ...ourfather was. I just wanted the people that it affected most to finally know the truth.”
“This isn’t enough proof,” Yvonne said. “Where’s your real mother? Have you talked to her?”
Sallie shook her head. “All I know is her first name: Trudy. Nobody else knew anything more. My birth certificate says Odessa and Cabell Henderson are my parents. Says I was born right here on ’Fuskie.” She shrugged. “They were good to me. I was loved and well taken care of. I guess if I’d grown up someplace else, anyplace else, everything would’ve been just fine. But no, I grew up here and had to watch every summer as he brought you three down here to stay in this house, wear those pretty new clothes, and be treated like royalty. While he ignored me.”
“How do you know he knew?” Lana asked finally, even though disbelief still swam through her mind.
Tami suspected the three of them felt the same. This woman was sitting at the card table in her grandmother’s kitchen, telling them that their father had been a liar and a cheat. That their grandmother had known this, and nobody had said a word. She swallowed and considered getting up to fix herself a cup of tea. But then she’d have to find Grandma Betty’s brandy to add to it, because tonight desperately called for something stronger.
“I’m sure Ms.Janie also told you that my father liked his drink. Between him being in love with another woman thirteen years older than him and staying drunk most of the time because he couldn’t have her, his marriage to my mama became nothing but an arrangement. There was no talk of a divorce; he continued to pay the bills and take care of me, but that was it. He loved someone else and that was that.” She looked down at her hands and then back up to them after a few seconds. “He told me that the last time he tried to convince Ms.Betty that they should be together—I was six—and your ... our ...” She sighed. “Daniel was here with you and Lana. Ms.Betty turned him away again, told him he had to go home and be a husband to my mama and a fatherto me. Daddy was drunk and heartbroken, said Daniel should take responsibility and be a father to his own child. Daniel walked in on the argument.” She shrugged, then reached up shaking fingers to quickly swipe at the tears that had finally fallen from her eyes.
“So he knew before I was born,” Tami whispered.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Lana said, and stood from the table before rushing out of the room.
