"I wonder what will make you happy, I wonder what you'll do with it all..."

There was a letter pushed under Sylvia's door, picked up by Allegra and left on the dining room table. "I want to come home," the letter said.

"I made the most terrible mistake and you should never forgive me, but you should also know that I want to come home.

"I've always felt that making everyone happy was my job, and then like a failure if you or the kids couldn't produce that happiness for me. I didn't figure this out for myself. I'm seeing a counselor.

"So I was stupid enough to blame you for not being happier. Now I think, if I could come home again, I'd let you have your own moods, your lovely, loving alarms.

"Last week I knew I never wanted to be with a woman I couldn't bring to my child's hospital room. i had this dream while we were in those awful chairs. In my dream there was a forest. (Remember how we took the kids to the Snoqualmie National Park and Diego said, 'You said we were going to a forest. There's nothing here but trees'?) I couldn't find you. I got more and more panicked, and then I woke up and you were right across the room from me. It was such a relief I can't even say. You asked me how Pam was. I haven't seen Pam for two months. She wasn't the woman for me after all.

"I've been unjust, weak, resentful, and inconstant. But in my heart it's always been you."

Sylvia sat folding and unfolding the letter, trying to see how she felt about it. It made her happy. It made her angry. It made her that Daniel was no prize. He was coming home, because no one else turned out to want him.

She didn't show the letter to Allegra. She didn't even tell Jocelyn. Jocelyn would respond however Sylvia wished, but Sylvia didn't know yet what response that would be. It was too important a moment to ask Jocelyn to go through it unguided. Sylvia wanted things simple, but they refused to simplify. She carried the letter about, rereading and rereading, watching her feelings rearrange about it, sentence by sentence, like a kaleidoscope.

- Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club


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Listening to: Mandy Moore - Latest Mistake