[This e-mail is sent after the failed dinner with Leah and Ed, and it is delayed by an additional few hours where the sender read the e-mail, went to think on it in the arboretum, and then returned to respond.]
You are giving me carte blanche to ask what I would then? Very well.
You say you do not trust me, because you fear I will expose you to the censure of the world and to the public eye. I would ask you why I hadn't done anything yet, if that was my intention. But I suspect you'd simply argue that I was waiting to amass a collection of correspondence before I attempted to sell your e-mails.
Why are you a cynic? There, that was direct, was it not? I'm aware of the fiasco that happened on your forums, though I didn't experience it, and you'll be happy to know I have gotten no information on your personal life from any such venue. In turn, I will tell you what I've figured out on my own.
You're tired enough to make errors in typing, which I can tell you're entirely too intelligent to do under normal circumstances. You aren't writing, which is something you claim inability to do without. You vacillate from being exceptionally charming (like a pair of comfortable shoes?) to being bitingly sharp (a less familiar suit?). Your e-mails come like clockwork (except for this one), as if they were being sent by someone with a very set schedule of some sort. I can only deduce you are significantly ill, which is nothing to be ashamed of or feel the need to hide.
Are you ill?
And I can assure you, I intend to share these things with no one. You do not know me well, Daniel, but money is not the driving factor in my life. You will, I hope, learn that in time.
Regarding my parents, since a confession seems appropriate here, they are not a love story, despite the poetic phrasing. Lancelot was not one knight for my mother, but many knights. And my father came with a past that made escaping involve constantly moving about. The round table at the Davis house was not all chivalry and words of love. And your Macbeths, do you refer to their relationship or their tendencies?
I will leave it at this. I have just been reunited with a family member I have not seen in a very long time, and who I was very anxious about seeing. To say it did not go well would be an understatement.
Claire, who hopes you will learn to trust her in time.
P.S.: E. Dickinson, I find, speaks truth like few other poets:
It's all I have to bring today – This, and my heart beside – This, and my heart, and all the fields – And all the meadows wide – Be sure you count – should I forget Some one the sum could tell – This, and my heart, and all the Bees Which in the Clover dwell.