Read Online For Love by Sue Miller - Free Book Online Page B

too, darling, for the choice I’ve had to make. Lawrence does want me back – me and the children. And I’m going to go. He is their father, he is my husband,
     and it’s our life. We’ll stay in Cambridge until after Jessica’s service, and then we’ll go back to Minnesota.
    And I mustn’t see you again, darling. You mustn’t try to call or come over. You can understand, I’m sure, how hard it will be for all of us if you do, how upsetting to
     the children – to say nothing of me! And Lawrence mustn’t know about it. Not because it would change anything. I honestly don’t believe it would. But because it would
     needlessly cause him so much pain. You and I are in pain, darling – in my case, agony – but there’s no reason to put him through this too. And so, when you speak to the
     police, when you talk about it to anyone else, even Jessica’s parents, I must ask you not to mention our relationship this summer. It was beautiful, everything about it, but now it must
     be just ours to remember forever. There is simply no point served in making it public knowledge.
    You must know how grateful I am to you for your silence so far. What torture it must have been – as it was for me! – to be silent last night through the questions, to sit
     across from Lawrence and me and talk to the police and say nothing of what was uppermost in your mind. That took a kind of generous courage I knew I could count on in you – that I did
     count on when they took you down for blood tests, etc. When you said, ‘family friend,’ I hope you could read in my face how moved, how touched I was that you weren’t going
     to [here several more words were crossed out] say anything more. I want my marriage back, Cameron. I thought it was over, done, but it isn’t; and I find I want it very much, for a whole
     variety of reasons. And I need you to be the loyal, true friend you’ve always been, and let me have it once more, by staying silent, by staying away.
    It isn’t anything like what you and I have – have had – but it has been steady and good and full of devotion in the past, and I think it can be again. And that’s
     what the children – and I too! – need. Cam, you and I love each other in a passionate way, a nearly desperate way, that I’m not sure either of us could live with. And each
     of us needs to go back to living, darling, in spite of all the hunger we will always feel – I know I will – for what we have experienced together. I beg you to remain silent. I
     beg you not to ruin this for me. I wish I could come and comfort you. I wish our lives hadn’t taken the course they’ve taken. And I also know we must stay apart and we must keep
     our secret. I implore you. With all my love, Elizabeth.
    Lottie sets the letter down and looks out the window. This is the back view, across to the elevated expressway. Traffic headed into the city is still thick, but Lottie isn’t seeing it.
She’s thinking about Cam, Cam and Elizabeth this summer. She’s remembering the way his face looked when he watched her. She’s recalling her own feeling of hunger for what they
seemed to have – and the anger it made her feel at Jack while she witnessed their falling in love. She looks again at the sheaf of papers. The writing gets bigger, sloppier, as Elizabeth
works her way through, Lottie notes. Suddenly she is imagining the way the scene must have played out at Elizabeth’s last night: the wailing, grieved children bundled up the stairs with
Elizabeth’s mother; Cameron, Elizabeth, and her husband in the living room with the cops. Mostly she can picture her brother’s white-faced silence, his stunned cooperativeness with the
police, with Elizabeth. They would have asked, ‘Now, you were pulling in the drive, Mr Reed, right? Coming to call on . . . ?’
    ‘I’m a family friend,’ he says, and Elizabeth probably nods. Lottie imagines Elizabeth’s faceless husband looking from one of them to the other as the