My legs gave out, and I sat directly on the floor.
Leo dropped beside me.
Gwen handed me the first envelope carefully, like it might break.
“Start there,” she whispered.
I opened it.
“Heather,
I know this looks bad. Please don’t think I abandoned you. I’m trying to come back. I promise.
— A.”
The air vanished from my lungs.
“Mom?” Leo whispered.
I couldn’t answer. I grabbed another letter.
“I don’t know if you hate me. My mother says you do. I don’t believe her, but I don’t know how else to reach you.”
“Oh no, no, no,” I whispered.
Leo leaned closer. “What is it?”
“He thought I hated him.”
Gwen let out a shaky breath. “That’s what our mother told him. She didn’t just lie, Heather. She stole eighteen years from all of you.”
I ripped open the third letter so quickly I almost tore it apart.
“If it’s a boy, I hope he laughs like you do when you’re truly happy.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
Leo stared at me. “He wrote that.”
I nodded and handed him one of the birthday cards.
“Read it,” I whispered.
He opened it carefully.
Inside, Andrew’s handwriting filled the card.
“To my child,
I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. But if your mom tells you I loved her, believe that with your whole heart.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Leo looked at Gwen. “You knew about this?”
“I didn’t know about the letters back then,” Gwen explained. “I was away at college, and my mother already considered me a disgrace, so nobody told me anything unless they absolutely had to. Andrew called me after they moved, panicking. He told me Heather was pregnant and that Mom wouldn’t let him go back.”
“I just wanted him to stay…” I whispered.
“I know,” Gwen said softly. “But I didn’t learn the truth until much later. By then, she’d already lied to both of you.”
Leo stared at the box in his lap. “So that’s it?” he asked quietly. “He wanted us, and all this time we thought he walked away?”
Gwen wiped her face. “He didn’t walk away. Three years ago, he was driving home from work when a truck ran a red light. He d:ied before the ambulance reached the hospital.”
“My dad’s really gone?”
“Yes.”
Gwen handed me Andrew’s old school photo and the worn pregnancy test I gave him eighteen years earlier. “After our mother got sick, she returned the letters to him. He kept every single one. He planned to try again.”
Outside, after I explained everything to my parents, my dad cleared his throat roughly. “Let’s get you home, kid.”
On the drive back, Leo fell asleep holding the box against his chest. At a red light, I looked over at him and finally understood the truth.
For eighteen years, I believed I was the girl Andrew abandoned.
I wasn’t.
I was the girl Andrew loved—and kept writing to until he no longer could.
[rotated_ad]
