Chapter 15 - THE LETTER I STILL HAVEN’T OPENED
Six months after the wedding, a letter arrived from the correctional facility where Adrian was being held while the remaining fraud matters moved through court.
The return address made my stomach tighten immediately.
Nathan picked it up from the hall table and looked at me.
“You want me to throw it out?”
I surprised both of us by saying no.
I put the envelope in my desk drawer instead.
I still have not opened it.
Some endings are stronger when left sealed for a while.
My life now is quieter.
Lark & Ivory is opening a third location.
Simone says I work too much.
Nathan says that too, though with more kissing and fewer spreadsheets.
The scar near my hairline is mostly hidden unless I pull my hair back.
Sometimes I do it on purpose.
Not because I want to be reminded.
Because I don’t want to forget what it cost to stop excusing what was right in front of all of us.
Dad calls once a week now, and sometimes we actually talk like adults instead of role-playing disappointment and obligation. Mom sends clumsy but sincere messages about recipes, weather, and whether I’m eating enough. They are trying to build something truer out of what remains.
I don’t know if that will ever become trust.
Maybe trust, once broken in a family, doesn’t return as one grand gesture. Maybe it comes back in smaller, humbler forms—kept appointments, honest sentences, no more asking the easy child to carry the hard silence.
As for Adrian, the law will finish what the reception began.
His choices belong to him now.
That should make the unopened letter simple.
It doesn’t.
Because somewhere inside that envelope might be apology.
Or manipulation.
Or blame disguised as grief.
Or one final attempt to rewrite the story so he becomes the misunderstood son again and I become the sister who had everything and still refused to share.
So I leave it closed.
Maybe one day I’ll open it.
Maybe I won’t.
Nathan says I don’t owe every wound a conversation.
He’s right.
Still, sometimes late at night, I look at that drawer and wonder one thing I can’t quite put to rest:
May you like
When the person who almost destroyed your wedding, your father, and your life finally writes to you from the ruins of his own choices—
is there ever any truth left worth reading?
