The Letter Opener
Margaret’s letter opener was silver, slim, with a small engraving of a dogwood blossom near the handle that had worn smooth over forty years of use. She had received it as a gift at our wedding from her aunt and had used it every morning at the kitchen table, opening bills and letters and the occasional card with the same deliberate attention she brought to everything she considered worth doing properly.
I had kept it in the same drawer after she died. I used it the same way, at the same table, in the mornings when the mail was worth opening carefully.
I want to start with the letter opener because it means something to me that the document that changed everything was opened with it. Margaret had asked me, in the last months of her illness, whether the people in my life would remember how to love me when the money was no longer visible. I had told her she was worrying about something that didn’t require worrying. I had believed this genuinely at the time.
The letter opener, and the document it opened, are part of how I came to understand that Margaret had been asking the right question.
The dinner was on a Saturday in September.
Harrington’s Steakhouse was the kind of Richmond institution that existed to mark significant occasions, white tablecloths and low jazz and waiters who had been there long enough to remember your preferences. David had made reservations three weeks in advance, as I knew because he had mentioned it twice, with the particular satisfaction of a man who wanted credit for the effort of planning.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
TAP ” READ MORE ” 👇
