Chapter 7: What He Wrote
She read it to herself first.
The rest of us sat quietly.
Tom looked at his coffee.
Ryan looked at the table.
I looked at my hands.
It took her four minutes.
I counted.
When she finished, she set the letter down on the table and pressed her palm flat against it, as if she needed to hold it in place.
"He says he's sorry," she said.
Her voice was steady but thin.
"Not in a — not in a general way.
He's specific.
He lists things." She paused.
"He says he was controlling.
He says he made you feel small.
He says he knew it while he was doing it and he did it anyway, and that's the part he's most ashamed of.
That he knew."
She looked at me.
"He says you were the bravest person he ever met, and that leaving was the right thing, and that he has never once blamed you for keeping me from him because he understands why you did."
I pressed my fingers to my mouth.
"He says he doesn't expect forgiveness.
He says he's not writing this letter to ask for anything." She lifted her hand from the letter.
"He's writing it because he wanted me to know that I was wanted.
That he thought about me every day.
That he has a box at home with every school photo Tom could find, and my name written on the outside of it."
The room was very quiet.
"He wants to meet me," she said.
"If I want to.
No pressure.
No timeline.
His number is at the bottom." She looked at Tom.
"Is he well enough to have visitors?"
"He's been well enough for a month," Tom said.
"He just didn't know if you'd want to come."
Iris folded the letter carefully along its original creases.
"Mom." She turned to me.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly."
"Okay."
"If I meet him — if I decide I want him in my life in some way — can you handle that?"
It was the most adult question anyone had ever asked me.
I thought about the sixteen years.
The name changes.
The new city.
The careful, deliberate silence I had built around us like a wall.
I thought about my daughter in her prom dress at two in the morning, putting her hand over mine.
"Yes," I said.
"It will be hard sometimes.
But yes."
She nodded.
Looked at the letter in her hands.
"I want to call him," she said.
"Today.
I don't want to wait."
Tom slid his phone across the table.
"I already have him on speed dial.
He's been sitting by his phone since seven this morning."
Iris almost smiled.
It was small and complicated and real.
She picked up the phone.
She looked at me one more time.
Checking.
I nodded.
She pressed call.
It rang twice.
Then a voice — low, careful, slightly rough at the edges — said: "Hello?"
May you like
And Iris closed her eyes and said: "Hi.
It's me."
