Chapter 134 Holly's Letter

Chapter 134 Holly's Letter

Ginny's POV

I found him in the study.

He was at his desk, not working, just sitting with his hands folded and the lamp on and the city outside doing its evening thing as always.

He looked up the moment I came in.

He saw the letter in my hand.

He saw my face.

He moved the chair beside his desk without saying anything, the way he always made room. I sat down. I looked at the letter in my hands. The white envelope, Holly's handwriting on the front, the date from three weeks ago visible on the back where I'd turned it over.

"She wrote it in Switzerland," I said. "While she was still recovering."

He waited.

"I want to read it to you," I said. "If that's okay."

"Yes, sure it is,” he said.

I unfolded it.

I started.

"If you're reading this, something happened and I didn't get to say this in person, which is annoying because I had a whole speech planned. So here's the written version, which is probably better anyway because you can't interrupt me."

I stopped.

The sound that came out of me wasn't a laugh and wasn't a sob. It was somewhere between them, the sound that happened when something was so entirely the person you'd lost that losing them and loving them became the same feeling for a moment.

I pressed my lips together.

I kept reading.

"I've been in this hospital bed in Switzerland for too long and I have had too much time to think, which is never good for me and you know that. But one of the things I kept thinking about was you. What you did. What the contract actually was, when you strip away the legal language and the careful framing you've always used because you never wanted me to feel guilty about it."

I paused again.

Ethan was very still across the small distance.

"You sold yourself to save me," I read. "That's what it was. You walked into a café with a man you didn't know and signed your name away because the alternative was watching me die and you couldn't do that. And then, and this is the part that I think about the most, you fell in love by accident in the middle of it. You fell in love with the man you'd made a transaction with, in the house that started as a business arrangement, and you didn't even notice it happening until you were already in it."

I stopped again.

I pressed my hand flat against the letter.

Ethan was looking at me. I could feel it even without looking up.

I breathed.

I kept reading.

"I think that's the best story I've ever heard in my life. I am genuinely furious that something happened and I can't tell it to people in person. I had so many plans for how insufferably I was going to be about being right about him. I was going to be so annoyed about it for years."

I laughed. Real, small, real.

"She really was," I said.

"Yes," Ethan said.

I looked back at the letter.

"About Ethan," I read. "He's the kind of man who sits in a hospital hallway for six hours without complaining and without making you feel like a burden for needing him there. I watched him do that in Switzerland. I watched him when he didn't know I was watching. He sat in the worst chairs with the worst coffee and he didn't fidget or make it about himself or check his phone every five minutes. He just sat there. And that tells you everything about a person. Keep him." I paused. "Don't do the thing where you decide you don't deserve things. You do that. You've always done that. You earned something good and you're going to try to give it back because you think good things come with a hidden cost. They don't, Gin. Sometimes things are just good. Keep him. You deserve everything."

I had to stop.

I pressed the back of my hand against my eyes.

Ethan didn't move. He didn't say anything. He let me have the moment, which was the right thing, which was the thing he always did.

I steadied myself.

I turned to the last part.

"I know what you're going to feel like," I read. "I know you're going to feel like you're lost. Like you gave everything and it wasn't enough and the cost was too high and nothing came out right. I need you to hear this before you decide that."

I had to breathe.

"It was enough. Ginny. Listen to me. You gave me years I wasn't supposed to have. The doctors in the first year told me eighteen months, maybe two years. You know that. I never told you that I knew they said that. But I knew. And then you walked into a café and signed a contract and the years kept coming. Switzerland. The procedure. The recovery. The scans that came back clear. I had all of that because of you. I had time. Actual time. Time to get better and watch my sister fall in love by accident and give enormous thumbs up through hospital glass and tell a very intimidating man that his firm handshake was acceptable."

I laughed again. The broken kind.

"You gave me all of that. That's not a loss. That is the most extraordinary thing one person has ever done for another person and I need you to know I knew it. I always knew it. You never said it directly because you didn't want me to feel the weight of it, but Gin, I felt it. I felt it every single day and I was grateful every single day and I love you more than I know how to say in a letter written in a Swiss hospital bed."

I stopped.

I held the page.

My hand was shaking slightly.

"Now go live like you mean it," I read. "That's the whole instruction. That's everything I want for you. Go live like you mean it and don't you dare be small and don't you dare apologize for taking up space and don't you dare let that baby grow up thinking her mother wasn't sure she deserved good things. Because you do. You always did."

I paused.

One line left.

"Love, H."

I folded the letter.

I held it in both hands.

The study was very quiet. The lamp was on. The city was outside. Everything was exactly where it had been when I came in, except everything was completely different.

Ethan was very still and quiet.

I looked at him.

His jaw was set in the way it got when something had landed heavily and he was managing it.

I said: "She wrote this three weeks ago."

"Yes," he said.

"She knew," I said. "On some level she—" I stopped. "She was writing goodbye letters from Switzerland while the doctors were telling me she was getting better."

He said: "She was telling you in advance. So you'd have it.

Whatever happened."

I looked at the letter in my hands.

"I can't let it be for nothing," I said.

"It's not for nothing," he said.

"I need to do something. Something real. Something that means she was here. That people know she was here. That she mattered."

I looked at him. "Something with her name on it."

He held my gaze.

"Tell me what you want Ginny.”

I looked at my husband.

At the man Holly had said kept him in the same sentence as you deserve everything.

At the man who had sat in the worst chairs with the worst coffee for six hours without making it about himself.

"I want to build something with her name on it," I said.

He didn't hesitate.

"Then we build something," he said.