Relentless

something … so dark I didn’t want it hanging over you, over our life together. But now I think maybe I should have told you.”
    “Does it concern just a stripper or is there a llama involved?”
    I took a deep breath, blew it out. “Aunt Edith not only raised me but also adopted me. My born name isn’t Greenwich.”
    “Couldn’t be Hitler, you’re not that old. Anyway, it’s Durant.”
    I could not have been more surprised if she had shot me. “How do you know that? How long have you known?”
    Cleaning her pistol with the same expression of affection that brightened her face when she brushed Lassie’s coat, Penny answered the second question first: “Since shortly after we were married.”
    Only one explanation occurred to me: “Grimbald. He wanted to find out everything about the man his daughter was marrying. He’s the kind who would know a private detective.”
    “What kind is that? A Boom? But it wasn’t Daddy. It was your aunt Edith.”
    I could not have been more surprised if, after having shot me once, she’d shot me again. “Edith died four years before we met.”
    “Cubby, when a good woman knows an important thing needs to be done, she won’t let death prevent her from doing it.”
    Penny clearly enjoyed teasing me with this revelation, which I supposed was a good thing, since it must mean she wasn’t angry.
    “Edith suspected you might keep those events secret out of guilt or shame—or modesty. She knew the story revealed what a brave and decent boy you were.”
    “Not brave,” I disagreed.
    “Oh, yes. Very brave at six. And she thought it was a miracle that you were spared,
the way that you were spared
. She believed a wife should know her husband had some special destiny. So she wrote it all in a long letter, which she entrusted to her attorney.”
    “Johnson Leroy.”
    “Yes. He kept track of you at her request. When he learned of the marriage, he sent me her letter.”
    “And you never told me.”
    “She asked me not to tell you. She wanted you to have a chance to tell me of your own volition, sooner or later.”
    I had dreaded recounting the hideous details. Now, fourteen years after her death, Edith lifted that weight from me.
    “She must have been quite wonderful,” Penny said.
    I nodded. “I think she was very like her sister. So … in a way, I didn’t entirely lose my mother when I was six.”
    “I memorized the opening line of her letter. ‘Dear nameless girl, I know that you have a kind heart and a good soul and a lovely laugh, because Cubby has chosen to spend his life with you, and Cubby values all the right things.’”
    For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then: “I’d like to read that letter.”
    “I’ve saved it for you,” she said. “And one day, for Milo.”
    “Oh, well, I don’t know….”
    “Of course you know,” Penny said. “Eventually Milo should read it. If there was a miracle, let’s not pretend we don’t know why you were spared. Without you and me, there would be no Milo. And if I know one thing for sure, it’s that someday, somehow, the world is going to be a better place because Milo’s in it. Don’t you think?”
    I met her eyes, that double-barreled gaze of truth. “I think. Yeah. I think.”
    Finished cleaning her pistol, she said, “You know another thing I’m sure about?”
    “If there’s a big surprise in it, I can’t handle another one.”
    “I’m sure, you’ll never again have a problem with a tool or a machine. No more hammered thumbs, no vacuum-cleaner catastrophes.”
    “That’ll take a second miracle.”
    “Because all that clumsiness was never anything but an elaborate excuse not to have a gun, not to learn how to use one.”
    “Where did you get your psychology degree?”
    “The school of common sense. If you could turn the toasting of a slice of bread into a calamity, no one would ever want you to pick up a gun.”
    “Calamity is a pretty strong word.”
    “Kitchen-repair bill was three thousand bucks. And you are
not
a clumsy man. Consider your writing. Consider how you are in bed.”
    “I’m no Jon Bon Jovi.”
    “I’m no longer a schoolgirl with expectations as low as that. You learned the basics of guns today, and the world didn’t end.”
    “The day’s not over.”
    She kissed me. Her tongue was sweet.
    “Aunt Edith was right about one thing,” I said. “I sure do know how to pick ’em.”

    Watching from the Mountaineer, Lassie had laughed at me so much that she needed to