Catherine looks into the
shaving mirror that is in Herb’s drawer.
He hadn’t used it for years.
“Leave this drawer alone.”
He said. “These are my things.”
His tone is not to be argued
with, but she had not dreamt his gruffness was about a secret. Beneath a couple
of cuff-link boxes and his passport is a bundle of letters.
She stops. It’s Pandora’s
box. A secret lover, a second set of children, a relative whose favor he tried
to cultivate, his birth mother, all reasons for a secret correspondence.
The face in the shaving
mirror is no one Catherine knows.
