“He noticed.”
Of course he did.
“He had this irritating habit,” Adrian said, “of noticing things people were trying not to show.”
I smiled despite myself.
“Yes.”
“One night he found me still working in the foundation office at nearly midnight. He asked why I was there.”
“And you told him?”
“No. I told him to mind his own business.”
“That also sounds like you.”
“He returned twenty minutes later with two terrible sandwiches and informed me that my business had become his business because I looked like I was about to fall over.”
A picture formed in my mind so clearly I could almost see it.
Daniel, invading someone’s defenses with complete disregard for whether he had been invited.
“What happened?”
“I told him about my mother.”
Adrian looked down.
“He didn’t offer advice. He didn’t tell me everything would be fine. He sat there and ate his sandwich.”
My eyes stung.
“That really sounds like him.”
“We became friends after that.”
“Why didn’t I ever meet you?”
“I asked him once.”
“And?”
“He said you were pregnant and working impossible hours and that the last thing you needed was another Kane in your life.”
I laughed.
“That definitely sounds like him.”
Adrian smiled faintly.
“Later I realized he was also protecting our friendship from work. I was his client. He thought boundaries mattered.”
“That sounds less like him.”
“He was capable of occasional wisdom.”
I sat down.
“So the letter?”
Adrian removed another page from the box.
Not the original.
A photocopy.
He slid it toward me.
“There was more.”
I read.
Daniel had written the letter after Mia was born.
That was the first surprise.
The date was nearly seven years ago.
Adrian had remembered the timing incorrectly.
The letter began with jokes.
A complaint about hospital coffee.
A paragraph about fatherhood.
Then the tone changed.
**Julia thinks strength means being the person who never asks anyone to carry anything for her. I love that about her. I also worry about it.**
My vision blurred.
I continued.
**You’re the same, Kane, except you disguise it with expensive suits and an unreasonable number of meetings.**
