Emily,Dear Emily,Dearest Emily,
Maybe that’s too familiar. If so, I’m sorry about that too. I’ve spent days writing, deleting, rewriting the greeting to this letter. I’m not happy with my choice, but it’s one I’m least unhappy with. You don’t know me, sadly. I wish it were different and that’s just yet another of many sorries you’ll have collected by the time you finish reading this letter, if you read it at all. I hope you do. I wish my predecessor had done me this courtesy, for all the good it may not do, there is something to be said about setting expectations against unpleasant surprises. There are many to come.
It’s difficult to know how to begin. Your great grandfather fought in Kasserine Pass. In the first days of initial defeat, while laying flat against a rise in the desert sand on the valley floor, he felt something hard and smooth jutting from the ground, half-buried and ensnared in tufts of weed. The earth fought to hold on to the item, but he was persistent. He demanded it, and the earth obliged. In his deracination, he cut himself, and became forever bound to it. We became forever bound to it. When he returned home, he brought it with him, along with his acquired, or incubated, mental illness. He died alone, an unimaginably wealthy man.
You will find this item in the envelope.
I am dying, and now it is yours. It would find you, whether I sent it or not.
I am so, so, so sorry, Emily.
I will summarize the little I know. It didn’t help me, but maybe it will help you. I owe you much more, but this much I can provide.
You will come to understand why I was not in your life. Why you cannot imagine my face when you close your eyes. You may even accept this.
Things are about to get very strange for you. There is a honey-moon phase. A love bomb phase. Things are going to start going your way. Lots of opportunities. Bills are going to be something you don’t worry about. Food. Cars. Trips. Houses. You’re about to start coming into all of it. These are loans. You will pay for them. At some point, the price will become very high. Again – anything you value is currency of payment.
I don’t know much about you. I wouldn’t recognize the sound of your voice, or your unbridled laughter. I don’t know your wants, your struggles. I do know that you recently became a mother, and that no matter how acceptable it has become with the times, that you are unmarried, and that the father is not present. That is hard. I am sorry.
Other than this tenuous thing between us, we are strangers, forever connected. I will share one final thing. The Phoenicians worshiped a bull god. Moloch. There was a payment that I was unwilling to make, and I made sure that I could not make it. Nevertheless, you should know. The Phoenicians placated Moloch with their children. They burned them to him.
You can always have more children.