THE LETTER I NEVER SENT
A few weeks later, Derek wrote to me from custody.
The envelope sat on my kitchen counter for three days before I opened it.
He claimed he had been overwhelmed by debt.
He said Patricia had convinced him that temporarily moving Lily abroad would solve their problems.
He insisted he never intended to hurt our daughter.
He wrote that he had panicked when I came home early because everything was happening too quickly.
Then came the sentence that told me he still didn’t understand.
I wish you had just waited until your scheduled return date. None of this would have happened.
I read it twice.
Then I folded the letter.
Because he was wrong.
If I had returned three weeks later, Lily might have been gone.
My house might have been sold.
My accounts might have been emptied.
And forged documents might have been used to paint me as a mother who had willingly walked away from her child.
But even that wasn’t the worst possibility.
Had I not come home when I did, my daughter might not have survived those three days alone.
Derek wanted me to believe my early return destroyed his life.
The truth was that it saved Lily’s.
I placed the letter in a folder with the court documents.
I never replied.
