The Lie That Lasted Twenty Years
Chapter 03 - The Lie That Lasted Twenty Years
Thomas stared at Ethan.
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Too immediately for Marisol.
She turned toward him.
“What exactly were you to my sister?”
Thomas rubbed a hand across his face.
“Lily and I were together.”
Marisol pushed back from the table.
“No.”
“For almost two years.”
“That isn't possible.”
“It is.”
Marisol remembered Lily during those years. The secret phone calls. The sudden smiles. The nights she came home late and refused to say where she'd been.
Marisol had always assumed there was someone.
She had never imagined it was Thomas Whitaker.
Thomas explained that he had met Lily when they both worked temporary jobs at the old terminal during its renovation. He was twenty-nine. She was twenty-five.
They planned to marry.
Then, one afternoon, Thomas received a letter from Lily.
She said it was over.
She said she had met someone else.
Two weeks later, she disappeared from town.
“I tried to find her,” Thomas said. “She wouldn't answer me.”
Ethan reached into his bag.
He removed another piece of paper.
“My mother kept every letter you sent her.”
Thomas froze.
Ethan placed a small bundle on the table.
Dozens of unopened envelopes.
All returned to sender.
Thomas picked up the first one.
His own handwriting stared back at him.
Marisol looked from Thomas to Ethan.
“Lily never received these?”
“No,” Ethan said.
“My mother said someone made sure of that.”
Thomas's face tightened.
“Who?”
Ethan looked at him for a long moment.
Then he reached into his mother's envelope and removed one final page.
“She didn't know for certain until six months before she died.”
Marisol felt a chill.
“Know what?”
Ethan unfolded the page.
“My mother never wrote the letter that ended your relationship.”
Thomas stood abruptly.
Someone had separated them.
Someone had made Lily believe Thomas had abandoned her.
And someone had made Thomas believe Lily had chosen another man.
Marisol looked toward the conference-room door.
May you like
Because she suddenly remembered who had been working in the airport mail office twenty years ago.
Thomas's mother.
