Chapter 2: Three Streets Away
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Eighteen years of anger.
Eighteen years of telling myself she was selfish, cold, someone who could walk away from her own child without looking back.
And now this envelope.
"Open it, Dad," Leo said quietly.
I couldn't move.
Mrs.
Johnson reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"She loved you both," she said.
"That's the only reason she did what she did."
"What does that even mean?" My voice came out harder than I meant it to.
"What reason is good enough to leave a three-day-old baby?"
Leo didn't flinch.
He just watched me with those calm eyes of his.
I tore the envelope open.
The letter was two pages.
Her handwriting was small and careful, like she'd rewritten every word a dozen times.
The first line stopped me cold.
*Arthur, by the time you read this, I may already be g0ne.*
My chest tightened.
I looked up at Mrs.
Johnson.
She was already crying.
"She was sick," she whispered.
"She found out the same week Leo was born.
She didn't want you spending the best years of your life watching her d!e AND raising Leo alone.
She thought leaving was the kindest thing she could do."
The room went completely silent.
Then Leo said the one thing I wasn't prepared for.
"Dad…
she's been living three streets away for the last six years."
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What Arthur found out next — and what he did the moment he walked out that door — is in the full story.
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