Deborah wishes she could blot them out in one fluid ripple, all the hurt and sleepless nights, the impossible task of trying to move forward.
But more than that, live.
In those days, it was called a nervous breakdown; now it’s referred to as an acute stress disorder, as if the change provides comfort to the sufferer. It makes no difference to her what you call it, what label you package it up with to sell to patients; the trauma is no less real.
A significant part of her died that day, and Deborah likens it to missing a limb. People might learn to live without it because they have to, but they never forget it’s missing. Deborah knew she would never be whole again, but she took baby steps to move forward because it wasn’t just her life she had to consider.
But here on her lap, the words jump off the page at her, and never in a million years did Deborah expect this would be in her mailbox.
Cautiously optimistic, she rereads the paragraph over and over, squinting at the out-of-focus words, until she remembers she needs her reading glasses.
Terrified to see the writing sharpened, she holds the paper in her trembling hand.
Dear Deborah,
(Or maybe I should call you Mother, but it sounds strange after all this time.)
I’m sure this picture brings up lots of questions—namely, what happened at the hospital all those years ago. You were led to believe it was a tragedy, and it was, but of a different proportion.
I have asked myself what I should do over the years, the voice inside my head telling me to let go of some of the hurt, anger, and blame. We all make choices that sometimes have unintended consequences. I tell myself you did what you had to do because you had no other alternative.
I don’t want to punish you anymore with silence because it’s only hurting me in the process. We both need to heal. It’s time.
—S
Deborah must read it another hundred times before settling back to absorb the weight of the letter. She doesn’t dare let the note leave her grasp, for as silly as it seems, she’s worried it will float off into the air, a disappearing act.
Just like the letter writer.
Then, giddy with excitement, she gently lays the frail paper in her lap to clap her hands, but immediately, a wave of disappointment brings them to her gaping mouth, where she stuffs them.
What if it’s a hoax?
Deborah stares at the envelope, and with no physical address, just a PO box, she wonders suspiciously if the writer is who they claim to be. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s played an evil prank on her. Deborah trembles at the memory of the October the year after her husband’s death.
Recalling the scarecrow in their cornfield, she remembers how she thought it was cute until she got closer. Those straw-like mannequins have been used for years to keep pesky birds from disturbing the crops, and she used to make one every fall until the accident.
Someone had placed one in their field, meant to resemble a decapitated body, a gory mess covered in red paint. The trespasser had used sticks as arms, giving it a Freddy Krueger feel that gave her the willies.
Scowling at the memory, she scolds herself. Don’t think that way, Deborah. Not everyone is out to get you. It just seems that way.
Pacing the floor, she carefully considers what she wants her letter back to say, but then her pen wavers on the blank page. She starts and stops multiple letters, ripping the paper into tiny shreds and throwing them like loose confetti in the air.
Deborah then telephones the postmaster, whom she knows on a first-name basis after all these years, and he promises to research the identity of the box.
She impatiently waits for him to call her back, positive she’s wearing a hole in the carpet with her constant pacing. The old rotary phone doesn’t finish a full shrill before Deborah yanks it off the wall in apprehension.
With trembling fingers, she sinks into the nearest chair, and his answer shocks her. She hopes he doesn’t pick up on her high-pitched squeak. The zip code associated with the post office box is in Florida, and it belongs to an S. Sawyer. Beyond that, he can’t provide her any more details or a specific address tied to the box.
Deborah has so much to say, but it’s impossible to write off the lost time in a matter of sentences. Lingering questions suppress her happiness. Should she express her long-buried feelings?
Her pain and anguish? Guilt?
To pour out her remorse after nothing but silence feels as disingenuous as her sham marriage was.
Deborah doesn’t want to mess this up, and she wishes she had someone to confide in, her lips burning to talk. But practically a hermit, Deborah doesn’t have close friends, only acquaintances, and she fears they would gossip behind her back and call her a lunatic. Her only interaction with other people is at church or when she volunteers at a nursing home.
Deborah gulps.
The last time she tried to ask someone for help, it ended up causing repercussions she had never considered and destroyed multiple families. She certainly doesn’t need people to bring tired old speculations and theories to light when it comes to that fateful night. The only other person alive who witnessed what happened won’t even speak to her.
And it’s been sixteen years.
The cross pendant she permanently wears around her neck becomes a mass of knots, twisted by her troubled fingers. She remembers being a child in the front row for her daddy’s sermons, hearing his stern baritone as he drove his point home about the day of reckoning.
After flipping the dog-eared pages of his hand-me-down Bible to 2 Timothy 4:16, Deborah reads out loud: “At my first defense, no one supported me, but all deserted me;
