I can’t cry. I keep trying but nothing happens. There is just this fucking heaviness, a thick black ball in my throat. But no tears. You never cried. No matter how badly we argued, I never saw you shed a tear. Neither have I. Which makes me wonder why it is that we can’t cry. Are we some kind of broken? Or do you cry when no one is looking? These are things I find myself wondering at odd times. You know, in those moments between trying to cry so that I can grieve. I do grieve, but not in the way I expected.

Point of fact—and I’ll only confess this to you, who will never receive this letter—I am happy too.

She left everything to me. The house, the money, everything.

It isn’t the money that makes me happy. It’s the freedom.

Freedom, Delilah. That’s what she’s given me.

I know you think I always had money. I had nothing. It was all hers. Her family money. A small allowance is all I got. He—my father—wouldn’t allow me to work. No Saint would be seen laboring for money. Which is a load of bullshit since he came from nothing, he just didn’t want anyone to know it.

That necklace I sent—the one you want no part of—was the sum of all my savings. Years of squirreling away my funds. My ticket out of here. I wanted you to have it: a penance for all my misdeeds. Melodramatic on my part, don’t you think?

Doesn’t matter now. You don’t want it. And I have more money than I need. Obscene amounts.

The money allows me to breathe free.

For the first time, I can breathe.

And it’s all because my mom is dead.

My happiness is a twisted thing.

Are we all so fucked up, Delilah? Or is it just me?

Whatever the case, I’m getting out of here. Packing up and going to Berkeley—not my father’s alma mater, Alabama, as he demanded. Because, fuck him.

Anyway, the funeral is tomorrow. If you were here, would you hold my hand? I’m guessing no. But I wonder, if I held yours would you let go or would politeness keep your hand in mine. I wish I could find out.

—Macon

“I would have held your hand,” I whisper, my hands shaking. “If I had been there, I would have done it.”

But Macon is gone. At some point, he left the kitchen. I hurt for him, for the pain and confusion that is so clear on the page. I want to cry for him. But he’s right; I never can truly manage it. I had no idea he couldn’t either.

It’s his voice in my head now, telling me to keep reading. I pick up the next letter.

Delilah,