“It wasn’t random, Dad,” Chloe said gently. “That’s what we have to tell you. Read the letter. She wrote it to you. She always meant for you to read it. We were just… we were scared of what it would do to you.”
I unfolded the letter.
It was dated eighteen years ago, in the shaky hand of a very young woman, the letters pressed hard into the paper the way you write when you are afraid you will lose your nerve before you finish.
Sam, it began. You don’t know me, but I know everything about you, because my sister Ellie never stopped talking about you. You were the best thing that ever happened to her. She told me once that if she ever had a daughter, she’d want her to be raised by a man exactly like you.
I am nineteen years old. I am alone. The man who did this is gone. I have two baby girls and I have nothing, and I am sick in a way the doctors say won’t get better, and I have spent my whole pregnancy terrified of what happens to them when I’m gone.
And then Ellie d*ed. My big sister, the only family I had left, and her baby, your baby, and I sat at the back of the funeral where you didn’t see me because I was ashamed to be seen, and I watched you, and I thought: there is a man who was ready to love a daughter, and now he has no one to love, and I have two daughters and no one to love them.
Theo mentioned the beach at the service. He said he was taking you there to get you out of the house. I heard him. So I knew where you’d be.
I’m not abandoning them, Sam. I need you to understand that. I’m choosing. Out of everyone in the whole world, I am choosing you, because you are the one good thing my sister left behind, and I would rather give my girls to Ellie’s love than to the system.
Their towels have sailboats because Ellie and I used to watch the boats on the lake when we were kids. It’s the only good thing from our childhood. I wanted them to carry something good.
Please don’t look for me. By the time they can ask questions, I’ll be gone, and I don’t want them to find a grave. I want them to find you.
