“She told you?” I asked incredulously.
“She did,” Isabelle said. “And, I appreciated that more than I can say. Because she told me the truth, I was finally able to end my marriage without ever looking back. In a way, she freed me. I met her once more after that with Daphne, and she was just a sad, lonely kid who had tried to do the right thing. She had a mother who had neglected her, a father who didn’t care about her, and no one else in her life. I felt her for…and I still do.”
I shook my head. “I just can’t get over what she did.”
“Ask her why she did it,” Isabelle suggested. “Because whether or not you get back together, you’ll want to know.”
“And you don’t care that I was with Daphne’s sister?”
“I want you to be happy,” Isabelle said. “I want Noah to be happy. And before you found out about all this, I saw that you and Noah were both in a good place. I had to believe that had something to do with Kristen.”
After I hung up with Isabelle, I scrolled down to Kristen’s name. With my finger poised over the call button, I wasn’t sure if I should hit it or not. In the end, my need for closure won out, and I waited for her to pick up.
“Jake?” Kristen’s voice sounded breathless.
“I have questions for you,” I managed to say.
“I’m so, so sorry—”
“I don’t want to hear your apologies,” I said harshly. “I just called because I want to know why you did what you did and what happened between you and Daphne.”
She paused for a moment, and I could hear her breathing slow. “Okay; ask me anything.”
“Why weren’t you at her funeral?”
“I didn’t find out she had died until after she’d been buried,” Kristen replied.
“Because you’d stopped talking to her at this point?”
“Well, it was more like she stopped talking to me.”
“Why?”
“Our relationship was fragile to begin with,” Kristen explained softly. “I was her father’s illegitimate child. More importantly, I was the direct result of the affair he had had with my mother. After Isabelle divorced him, he moved in with my mother and me. It caused problems between Daphne and me. She started lashing out at me because she couldn’t lash out at her father.
“And then it got worse, and I realized how unhappy and dissatisfied she was. When she told me she was thinking about enlisting, I got upset. I told her she was just running away from her problems, instead of facing them. I told her she needed to stand up to Ted so that she could move on. Enlisting was just the coward’s way out. It wasn’t my finest moment, and I regret a lot of what I said to her that day… But it was the final straw for her, I suppose.
“She said things to me and then stormed off. After that, I didn’t hear from her again…until the letter.”
“The letter?” I repeated. “What letter?”
“I received a letter from Daphne some time back,” Kristen replied. “It was only when I called the number she had left that I found out she had died. She had sent the letter from Afghanistan, you see, and it had been delayed in reaching me. By the time I got it, she had already been buried a month.”
“What did the letter say?” I asked with baited breath.
“I… It’s personal—”
Immediately, my temper flared up, and I bit back. “Personal?” I said. “I think we’re past that point now, don’t you, Kristen?”
“That’s not what I meant, Jake.”
“You know what?” I said. “I don’t care. I don’t want to see you ever again; do you hear me?”
“Jake—”
“I’m giving you a two-month severance package,” I interrupted. “So you don’t have to show up to work on Monday.”
“What?” she gasped. “You’re firing me?”