The moment my father pulled the blanket from my seven-month-pregnant body, the carefully constructed story my husband and mother-in-law had been telling for months collapsed.

Chapter 16

The letter arrived in a plain white envelope, no return address.

I almost threw it away.

But something made me open it, and when I did, I found Linda’s handwriting — spidery now, shaky, the handwriting of a woman who had aged twenty years in prison.

Emily,

I know you have no reason to read this. I know you have no reason to forgive me. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not even sure I deserve to write your name.

But I need you to know the truth. Not the truth I told in court. The real truth.

I was not always a monster. I don’t say that to make you feel sorry for me. I say it because I need to understand how I became one, and I think the answer is that I stopped seeing you as a person. I saw you as a threat to my son. I saw you as the woman who was taking him away from me. And I convinced myself that anything I did to protect him was justified.

I was wrong. I was so wrong, Emily, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

I don’t know if I ever loved you like a daughter. I should have. You were my daughter-in-law, and you were carrying my grandchild, and I should have protected you. Instead, I hurt you. I helped my son hurt you. I stood in your doorway and watched you suffer and called you dramatic.

I think about you every day. I think about the baby — about Grace. I will never meet her. I know that. I don’t deserve to.

But I want you to know that I am glad you got out. I am glad you told the truth. I am glad you have your father, and your daughter, and your freedom.

You deserved better than us.

You always did.

— Linda

I read the letter three times.

Then I read it a fourth time, and I sat very still in the quiet of my living room, holding the paper in my hands.

Dad found me there an hour later.

“Emily? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I looked up at him. “Everything. I don’t know.”

He sat down across from me.

“Linda wrote to me,” I said. “From prison.”

Dad’s face hardened. “What does she want?”

“Nothing.” My voice shook. “That’s the strange part. She doesn’t want anything. She just… apologized. She said I deserved better. She said she’s glad I got out.”

Dad was quiet for a long moment.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” I looked down at the letter. “I thought I would feel something when this happened. I thought I would feel angry, or vindicated, or… something. But I just feel tired.”

“That’s okay,” Dad said. “You don’t have to feel anything you don’t feel. You don’t owe her a response. You don’t owe her forgiveness. You don’t owe her anything at all.”

“I know.”

“Do you want my advice?”

I nodded.

“Burn it,” Dad said. “Or keep it. Or frame it. It doesn’t matter what you do with the letter, Emily. What matters is what you do with the power it gives you.”

“What power?”

“The power to decide.” He met my eyes. “For years, they decided everything for you. What you ate. What you took. What you said. Where you slept. And now, this woman is putting herself in your hands. She’s asking you to decide what happens next.”

I looked at the letter.

“I think,” I said slowly, “I want to forgive her.”

Dad didn’t flinch.

“Not for her,” I said. “For me. I’m tired of carrying her around in my head. I’m tired of being angry at someone who doesn’t matter anymore. I want to put her down.”

“And can you?”

“I don’t know.” I folded the letter carefully. “But I want to try.”

I didn’t write back to Linda.

I didn’t forgive her, exactly — not in the way she might have hoped.

But I stopped carrying her with me.

I put the letter in a box in the back of my closet, next to the things I didn’t need anymore, and I closed the door.

And I went into the living room, where Grace was playing with her grandfather, and I picked her up and held her close and let her little hand pat my cheek.

“Mommy’s okay,” I whispered to her. “Mommy’s free.”