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Gladys knocks on my door, and I look up. “Rhence, sir, there is a Mrs. Bradly downstairs in the lobby requesting to see you.”
My heart leaps into my throat. “You mean, Rachel?” I should have her thrown out on her ass, but the truth is I’m dying to see her.
“No, sir.” She glances down at her note pad. “I’m sorry, it’sDr.Bradly.”
Awful dread floods through me. “Rachel’s mom?”
Gladys shrugs. “I’m not certain, sir. I don’t know the family.”
This could be bad, very bad. But my desperation to hear word about Rachel beats my apprehension. “Let her up and send her in as soon as she gets here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I pace the room, bracing myself for the inevitable confrontation. I did the right thing, I repeat like a mantra to gird myself up. They were the assholes who snubbed their noses at me, likely egging Rachel on when she wrote that letter to me.
After five nerve racking minutes, Gladys reappears at my door. “Dr. Bradly is—”
Before she can complete her intro, an impeccably dressed Dr. Helen Bradly storms into my office. I ask Gladys to leave and shut the door behind her.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dr. Bradly says, waving my letter in her hand. “My baby girl ismissing. I haven’t heard from her in nearly ten days. I went to her apartment only to find this!” She shoves my letter in my face. “You were planning this all along, weren’t you? What kind of sick, twisted monster are you? How could you sit in our house at our table, knowing what you were going to do to my baby?”
I back away, but she keeps moving forward. I raise my hands. “You don’t understand, Dr. Bradly. There’s a whole lot of history behind this that you don’t know about.”
Her eyes are round with anger. “What history? What did she do to you to deserve this?” She shoves the letter at me.
“It’s no less cruel than the letter she wrote me back in high school.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? What letter?”
His face twists with derision. “Don’t play innocent, Mrs. Bradly. You probably dictated that letter to her. You’d been hounding her to dump me and you finally got your wish.”
“Wait…” she says, her eyes darting about as if assembling the pieces to an elaborate puzzle. “You think Rachel dumped you…in some letter?”
I roll my eyes at her persistence in feigning ignorance.
“First of all,” she says holding up a finger, her dark brown eyes are large with outrage. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. But second of all, you were just silly kids back then.” She jabs a finger at me. “You did this petty, vindictive shit as a full-grown man. You disgust me!”
Her words hit like a blow to my gut. “You don’t know what that letter did to me,” I fire back. “I was a vulnerable, messed up kid whose sun rose and set on Rachel,” I say, hearing the tremor in my voice. “She built me up, then tore me to shreds in that letter and never looked back. Never apologized for it.”
Loathing and anguish fill Dr. Bradly’s eyes. When she speaks, her voice is laced with venom. “You ignorant,stupidfool. Rachel loved you, that girl worshipped the ground you walked,” she scowled at him. “Tear you down? Break up with you?” She shook her head slowly. “Not my Rachel. I don’t know where this,” she uses air quotes, “letter came from, but it wasn’t Rachel.”
The floor shifts from beneath me as the veracity of her words hit home. But the letter… “No, no it was Rachel. She keeps asking if I still have the damned letter.”
Dr. Bradly searches through her handbag and pulls out a worn envelope. “Rachel intended to send you a letter before she left for Europe,” she says, jutting her hand out for me to take it. Her face contorts with utter contempt. “Only I read it first, and that’s how I discovered that she was planning on marrying you when we returned. I couldn’t let that happen, not in a million years.”
I snatch the letter and immediately recognize Rachel’s flamboyant handwriting. I can hear her voice in the words as I read. I see all of her custom doodlings of us together, all the hearts with my name in it. She tells me how much she’ll miss me while she’s gone. She lists out twenty reasons why she loves me and thinks I’m so amazing. She tells me she can’t wait to get back so that we can go to the county clerk to get married…
Oh. My. God. What have I done!
Dr. Bradly either doesn’t notice or chooses to ignore the stricken look that I’m sure has taken up permanent residence on my face. “I took her letter from the mailbox and let her believe it had been sent.”
The last piece of the puzzle falls into place with a sickening thud. That’s why Rachel kept referring to her letter. It was her love letter to me, building me up, making sure I knew how much she loved me and couldn’t wait to become my wife, dirt poor as I was!
And in return, I did the unthinkable to her. The sound that erupts from my throat startles us both.
“Oh, God! What have I done?” I cry out.
“I always knew you were the worst thing that ever happened to her,” she says, her voice dripping with venom. “And you’ve just validated every vile thing I ever thought of you.”
