PART 2 — THE SECRET OF THE ENVELOPE
The silence in the living room was so tangible you could have cut it with a knife. The ticking of the old wall clock sounded like hammer blows in my ears. There he stood, my son Lucas, with the yellow envelope in his hands. The paper was yellowed with time, but his father's ink was still painfully clear.
I wanted to say something, formulate an apology, provide an explanation that could undo decades of pain, but words stuck in my throat. How do you explain to your child that the man we both loved—or at least believed we knew—had spun a web of lies that tore our entire family apart?
Lucas looked at the postmark. Thirty years old. Exactly from the week after he had left the house.
"Open it," I whispered, although my own voice barely rose above a murmur.
Lucas hesitated. His fingers, roughened by years of hard work and a life I had completely missed, glided over the edge of the paper. He pushed the flap open and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. His eyes moved rapidly across the lines as he read what his father had written long ago.
I watched his face turn pale. The color drained from his cheeks and his jaw tightened firmly. A tremor ran through his body, followed by a laugh more bitter than gall.
"He lied," Lucas said quietly, almost in disbelief. "He lied to me. And he lied to you."
"What does it say, Lucas?" I asked pleadingly, taking a step forward and reaching out my hand to touch him. But he stepped back as if my touch were poisonous.
"Read it yourself," he answered ice-cold, shoving the letter into my hands.
The handwriting of my late husband, Willem, stared back at me. I began to read, and with every sentence I read, my memory of our marriage, our family, and the past thirty years collapsed like a house of cards.
The letter was addressed to Lucas, dated the day after his departure. Willem wrote that Lucas should never come back, that he had dishonored the family, and that his mother—meaning me—no longer wanted any contact with him. That I had decided it was better to completely cut ties.
My breath caught. Tears streamed down my cheeks. "No... No, that's not true! I never said that! Willem... he never said that to me!"
Lucas looked at me with a gaze in which pain and anger alternated. "And yet it lies here, Mom. Under your own roof. In your own box. How can I still believe you?"
Before I could answer, a strange sound echoed from the hallway. A soft scratching, as if something or someone was stumbling against the front door. Lucas and I looked at each other in fright. The door, still ajar from our argument, moved slowly.
