The question of fairness stayed in the room.<\/p>\n
Michael had asked it plainly.<\/p>\n
If Walt had left something for his children, why shouldn't they receive equal shares?<\/p>\n
I understood why he wanted an answer.<\/p>\n
I also wished he had asked something else first.<\/p>\n
What had his father written?<\/p>\n
Why had he taken the trouble to prepare three separate envelopes?<\/p>\n
What did he want each of them to remember?<\/p>\n
Those were the questions I had been carrying.<\/p>\n
Michael was looking at the envelopes as though their weight might explain everything.<\/p>\n
Stephanie was doing the same.<\/p>\n
Danny hadn't said a word.<\/p>\n
I sat across from them and felt how strange it was to be the only parent left at the table.<\/p>\n
For years, Walt and I had raised our children together.<\/p>\n
We had watched them grow from babies into people with opinions of their own.<\/p>\n
Now I was looking at those people without him.<\/p>\n
And I was being asked to explain something he had chosen to leave behind.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to speak for him before they read what he had written.<\/p>\n
"Mom," Michael said, "I'm not trying to make this difficult."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"I just don't understand why there would be a difference."<\/p>\n
"I understand that."<\/p>\n
Stephanie glanced at him.<\/p>\n
Then she turned toward me.<\/p>\n
"Are you saying Dad meant to give Danny something extra?"<\/p>\n
I looked down at the table.<\/p>\n
The envelopes were still closed.<\/p>\n
"Read yours, Stephanie."<\/p>\n
She pressed her lips together.<\/p>\n
I recognized the expression.<\/p>\n
She had made that same face as a child when she was unhappy with an answer.<\/p>\n
I remembered being able to reach across the kitchen table and take her little hand.<\/p>\n
I could not do that now.<\/p>\n
Not because I didn't love her.<\/p>\n
Because she was no longer eight years old.<\/p>\n
She was a grown woman asking grown questions.<\/p>\n
And I could not protect her from whatever feelings her father's letter might bring.<\/p>\n
Michael looked toward Danny.<\/p>\n
"Do you know what's in yours?"<\/p>\n
Danny shook his head.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
Michael looked back at me.<\/p>\n
"So none of us knows?"<\/p>\n
"Not until you read them."<\/p>\n
Nobody spoke for a moment.<\/p>\n
I could hear the slight movement of the paper as Stephanie turned her envelope between her fingers.<\/p>\n
She was impatient.<\/p>\n
I could see that.<\/p>\n
Michael looked concerned about the difference.<\/p>\n
Danny looked uncomfortable with the attention.<\/p>\n
It would have been easier if all three envelopes had looked alike.<\/p>\n
I knew that.<\/p>\n
No one would have compared their thickness.<\/p>\n
No one would have begun by asking whether the contents had been divided evenly.<\/p>\n
But they did not look alike.<\/p>\n
And I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n
I thought about the photograph that Stephanie was about to find.<\/p>\n
I knew what it showed.<\/p>\n
I knew how young she had been.<\/p>\n
And I knew Walt was in it with her.<\/p>\n
I wanted that picture to matter.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to recognize herself before she began worrying about what her brothers might receive.<\/p>\n
I had been carrying that hope quietly.<\/p>\n
Now I wasn't certain it would survive the first few minutes.<\/p>\n
"Does this have to be about who gets more?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Stephanie looked up.<\/p>\n
"We haven't even seen what we got."<\/p>\n
"Then look."<\/p>\n
My voice came out firmer than I intended.<\/p>\n
I saw her expression change.<\/p>\n
I regretted my tone immediately.<\/p>\n
"I didn't mean to snap at you."<\/p>\n
She lowered her eyes.<\/p>\n
"It's fine."<\/p>\n
But it wasn't fine.<\/p>\n
Walt was dead.<\/p>\n
I was sitting with our three children.<\/p>\n
And instead of hearing his words, we were talking around them.<\/p>\n
I looked at Michael.<\/p>\n
He rested his forearms on the table.<\/p>\n
His watch glinted again.<\/p>\n
I noticed it without meaning to.<\/p>\n
I had seen him grow into the sort of man who paid attention to what things were worth.<\/p>\n
That did not tell me everything about him.<\/p>\n
It was one part of the man he had become.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to judge him by a single question.<\/p>\n
Yet I couldn't deny that his question had hurt me.<\/p>\n
"If it's money," he said, "there should be a clear explanation."<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
"I hear you."<\/p>\n
He looked relieved for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I added something.<\/p>\n
"But I want you to hear your father, too."<\/p>\n
That quieted him.<\/p>\n
Danny moved his envelope slightly away from the edge of the table.<\/p>\n
It made a soft scraping sound.<\/p>\n
Stephanie glanced over.<\/p>\n
He stopped moving it.<\/p>\n
"I'm not asking Danny to give me anything," she said.<\/p>\n
"I didn't say you were."<\/p>\n
"I just noticed the difference."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
She looked down at her own envelope.<\/p>\n
I watched the way she held it.<\/p>\n
Tightly.<\/p>\n
Like the paper itself had offended her.<\/p>\n
And I remembered her at the fair.<\/p>\n
Eight years old.<\/p>\n
Laughing.<\/p>\n
High above the ground on Walt's shoulders.<\/p>\n
She had trusted him to carry her.<\/p>\n
I could picture that much without looking at the photograph.<\/p>\n
That memory belonged to all of us.<\/p>\n
Yet she didn't know it was waiting inside the envelope.<\/p>\n
I almost told her.<\/p>\n
I wanted to say that there was something in there she might love.<\/p>\n
Something that had nothing to do with whether Danny's envelope was thicker.<\/p>\n
But I stopped myself.<\/p>\n
I had promised myself I would let Walt's words and choices speak first.<\/p>\n
So I sat still.<\/p>\n
Michael turned his envelope over.<\/p>\n
"This is strange," he said quietly.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
I didn't try to make it sound normal.<\/p>\n
It was strange.<\/p>\n
A father gone.<\/p>\n
Three children sitting with pieces of paper he had prepared.<\/p>\n
A mother watching them, unable to know what each would feel.<\/p>\n
There was nothing ordinary about that.<\/p>\n
"Are you ready?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Nobody answered immediately.<\/p>\n
Then Stephanie placed the envelope flat.<\/p>\n
She slid one finger under its edge.<\/p>\n
"I'll read mine."<\/p>\n
Michael sat back.<\/p>\n
Danny looked toward her.<\/p>\n
I folded my hands again.<\/p>\n
And this time, I didn't say anything else.<\/p>\n
The choice to begin belonged to her.<\/p>\n
The question of fairness stayed in the room. Michael had asked it plainly. If Walt had left something for his children, why shouldn't they receive equal shares? I understood why … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41717,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41709\/revisions\/41717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}