"No."

Lily Nystrom took two steps back until she felt the door solid against her back, then slid down it, shaking her head. "No," she repeated. "That can't be. That can't have happened."

Her dark eyes pleaded up at her aunt Daina. Daina sank down in front of her and clasped her hand. "I'm sorry, honey, but your mama passed on."

Lily wrapped her arms around her knees and began to rock back and forth. "No," she whimpered.

*

Several weeks later Lily sat on the floor in the hallway of her mother's house. Lily was the only child of a single mom, and it was up to her to go through and distribute Maureen Nystrom's belongings.

She had just found a shoebox full of letters. This wasn't the first of those that she had seen and she knew there was probably letters from her aunt in Kansas tucked in there, so she was going through it when she discovered a small white envelope with her mother's initials and address on it.

On the upper left-hand corner it said merely "CH, Sandburg, MI"

Lily's eyebrows went up. She turned over the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper, folded in thirds. She read,

"Maureen,

There is something I have to tell you. I've known for a long time and now I think the time has come.

I'm in love with you.

I'm taking a risk on this, I know. But knowing you and seeing Lily all the time is torture. I have to know it you feel the same way.

My marriage is a farce. We should never have married in the first place, and now that the kids are grown, my wife and I are living like friends, nothing more. I know people would talk if we were together but I think I have a strong enough standing in the community to withstand it and I would, just for you.

Lily needs a father in her life and I would be so good to her. Her education would be provided for and I would love her as much as my own children. I already love her. I loved her the first time I saw her, tiny and so sick in the hospital.

I hope you will feel the same way. You know where to find me.

Chris."

Lily's jaw was hanging open by the time she finished reading the letter. Someone was in love with her mother? Who? When?

Quickly she checked the envelope and read the June 1990 postmark.

"Chris?"

Suddenly a flash of realization dawned. "It's Dr. Herman."

That had to be it. Dr. Chris Herman had been Lily's pediatrician. He was a lovely man. still practiced in town. He had delivered Lily, and it had been a complicated birth.

"Dr. Herman and Mama?" Lily sat there staring at the letter in her lap, trying to picture that. She knew why Maureen hadn't gone to him. She wouldn't have broken up a marriage to save her life, she wouldn't have been the other woman. But he had loved her? Did he still love her? Did Mama love him?

Lily thought for a moment of taking the letter to her aunt Daina but as she thought of it she realized that she couldn't do that. This, she realized, would not be something that Maureen Nystrom would want spead around, She realized that her mother wouldn't have even wanted Lily to know. Those questions were still in her head, but she slowly crumpled the letter and slipped it into the trash.

Lily sighed. These questions, she knew, she would never have answered.

Learn more about this author, Rachel Fahnel.
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