The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around why you didn’t come. Bruce said it’s your fear of flying, fine. I know you don’t travel and I’ve told myself that’s why you haven’t ever come to visit me in London, but with all your principles of propriety, all your tenets on how one ought to be…you attend a funeral! Even if it’s someone you didn’t know well, even if you had a grudge. Fine that he’s not your husband anymore, but he was my father, Bruce’s father, Gilbert’s father. You should have been there. You know, a lot of times if I’m angry and I take a little time, my feelings will cool off, but the longer I sat with your not coming the angrier I got. Lina told me he wrote you a letter and waited for a reply, but you didn’t write back. You, who sit holed up at home and writing letters to god knows who every day, and knowing full well he was dying. I don’t understand you. I have never understood you.