‘Dear Mother,’ the letter began.
Ella’s heart was already in her mouth. The letter was from her father!
‘I don’t want to argue with you any more. I know you disapprove of my work, and Rachel’s. But not everybody sees the world as you do. What we’re doing is important, not just for us but for the world. You think you’re protecting Ella with this lie, but you aren’t. It’s cruel and it’s wrong. Please, Mother, for her sake if not for mine, tell her the truth. Give Ella our letters. She doesn’t understand now, but one day she will. Your loving son, William.’
Ella’s hands trembled. She read her father’s words a second and third time, trying to decipher every possible drop of meaning from the few short lines. What did he mean that Mimi ‘disapproved of his work’? Both Ella’s parents had been doctors. How could anybody disapprove of that? They were tending to the poor in India when the taxi they were traveling in was hit head-on by a truck, killing them both instantly.
And what ‘lie’ had her grandmother told her?
Most importantly of all, what were these letters her father mentioned? Had her parents really written to her? If so, surely Mimi would have kept those letters? She wouldn’t have destroyed those too, would she, like she did with the suitcase of clothes?
Frantic, Ella shuffled through the rest of the stack, opening up letters and quickly scanning each for her own name.
‘Dear Mother …’ the next one began. And the one after that, and the one after that. ‘Dear Mother’, ‘Dear Mother’, ‘Dear Mother’ … And then at last there it was.
‘My darling Ella …’
Ella ran a finger lovingly over the paper as if it were the Holy Grail, tracing each inked letter with infinite slowness.
‘I hope you are well and helping Granny as much as you can around the ranch. I know you miss us, and we miss you too, very very much. I wish I could explain more to you, but it’s not safe for you to be with Mommy and me right now. One day, I hope, it will be. But until then please know you are always, always in our hearts. Your ever-loving, Dad.’
Ella’s eyes welled with tears. Why hadn’t Mimi given this to her? Surely she would have known how much it would have meant?
There was no address at the top, but there was a date: 2 September 2000.
Ella stopped breathing. That must be wrong. That’s two years after they died.
She looked at the date again, staring at it, almost in a trance. Then reaching down to the bottom of the pile of papers, she pulled out each of the cards – there were eight in total. Four for Christmas and four for her birthday. Trembling in disbelief, Ella read them all.
‘Happy 6th Birthday!’
‘Now you are SEVEN!?
?
A cartoon dog in a top hat held up a balloon. ‘To the World’s Coolest Eight-Year-Old.’
All of them were signed. ‘All our love, Mommy and Dad.’
‘No,’ Ella said out loud. No. She wouldn’t have. She couldn’t!
She told me they’d died.
She told me they’d died when I was five.
Ella felt her breathing grow ragged. She felt dizzy all of a sudden, and sick. Sliding to the edge of her grandmother’s bed, she leaned forward with her head between her knees.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She told me they were dead.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She lied to me!
Ella stood up, then sat down, then stood up again – a cartoon display of indecision. Her head began to hurt again, pressure building up inside her skull as if some evil sprite were in there, inflating a giant balloon. It wasn’t voices this time, or static white noise – strangely she never seemed to get those symptoms at the cabin, only in the city – but it was debilitating nonetheless. She needed to read the rest of the letters but it was impossible. The whole room was spinning and images swam before her eyes.
I need a doctor, Ella thought, as the pain in her head brought her to her knees and she felt herself edging slowly towards unconsciousness. But there was no phone at the cabin and no cell reception for miles. If only she’d taken Bob up on his offer and let him come with her, he could have gone for help.