Chapter 2: What the Letter Didn't Finish

Part 2 ⬇️

Inside the package was a folded letter, a photograph, and a small stack of receipts held together with a rubber band.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The photograph showed my father standing outside a hospital I didn't recognize.

He was still wearing his orange work vest.

The timestamp in the corner read the exact date of my graduation.

I turned to the letter.

His handwriting was uneven, like he'd written it in a hurry.

*"I got a call that morning.

A woman named Carol said she was a nurse.

She told me your mother had been brought in overnight.

That she was asking for me.

That she didn't have long."*

I stopped reading.

My mother.

The woman who had walked out on us when I was three weeks old.

I hadn't heard her name spoken in my house in over twenty years.

*"I know I should have told you,"* the letter continued.

*"But I couldn't do that to you.

Not on your day.

So I went alone."*

I flipped to the receipts.

Gas station.

Parking garage.

A florist.

He had bought flowers.

For her.

Then I saw the last line of the letter, and my breath stopped completely.

*"There's something she told me that day.

Something about you.

Something I should have told you the moment I got home.

I just didn't know how."*

The letter ended there.

The rest of the page was blank.

---

What did her mother confess to her father that day — and why did he never find the words to tell her?

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