I didn’t feel relieved.
***
The paper was old. My name was on the front in handwriting I knew.
“She wrote this twenty years ago,” he said. “She told me to keep it hidden unless Ashley ever brought someone to my door.”
I read it in the car. Ashley sat in the passenger seat and didn’t say anything.
It was three pages long. Lily wrote about the specific plans she had to come back. After her father died. After she married a quiet man named Paul, who was good to her. After Ashley was born. After Ashley left for college.
It was three pages long.
Every year she planned to come back.
Every year she convinced herself that she had already caused enough damage.
And every year became another year.
Near the end, she wrote: “What I know now, that I didn’t understand at seventeen, is that time doesn’t make hard things easier. It just makes them more expensive.”
Then: “I spent thirty years wondering if you’d forgive me. I never found the courage to ask.”
