How many times has your father accused me of thinking I know everything? “Let’s hear it, Lil, Miss Knower of Everything.” When he says that (and sometimes he still says that) I will say, “Not true.” I say how I have never fully understood quantum physics and a couple of other things, like I don’t speak Swahili. These days he laughs at all of that. A joke of, what, 60 years? Still, there is so much I don’t understand in and of this world, the mind alone such a mystery. We think we will come to a place with all of the answers, but it just doesn’t work that way, even though I hope the opposite for you two. The romantic me wants you to be the ones to defy all odds and solve the mysteries, get all the way into that promised land. The realistic me simply wants you to find peace with all that you will never know.

After my mother’s death, my dad and I knew we had to give each other solid facts. Our lives depended on it. We never actually discussed this, and yet it was understood.

I will be at the library with so-and-so, and if I am not here by 5, you will know I stopped by Woolworth’s.

Sometimes I met my friends at the counter of Prospect Street Drug Store, and we sat and talked about this or that (school, clothes, boys), but I knew better than to let my dad down and leave him to worry. Many days, I hurried along those icy streets in saddle shoes or galoshes—oh, I could have used the tough warm boots I have worn in these recent years—and all the while, I imagined him pacing, peeking out the window where the streetlight glowed, and my chest ached and pulse quickened knowing the look on his face each time I was just seconds late. “Leave a note, Lil,” he said a million times, and so I did, and he did as well. Be right back, we often wrote. Sometimes we just wrote BRB. I have saved many of his notes (the solid clear letters, his B’s with a long tail like a cat). BRB, Lil. I tell you this because otherwise, you might spend years wondering, “Who is BRB?”

BRB was security. BRB was a promise.

Frank

What to say? The train has left the station. I love you because. Though he has imagined this moment many times, Frank hesitates now, pen poised and ready. Certainly he should leave a note; it’s the decent thing to do. The house is filled with Lil’s notes—reminders of appointments and who people are, the day and the weather—Remember, the notes say. Don’t forget.

He writes, June 12, 2018, and pauses.