Claire nodded. “And she still didn’t come.”
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Six Houses Away
One more page explained the rest. Daniel had forged my letter because he was afraid she’d go home – he needed her to believe there was nothing left to go home to. Less than two years later, she caught him with another woman and left him. The money in the account had never been his. Every deposit had come from her own paycheck.
But by the time she left Daniel, shame had done what his lie had started. It kept her away.
Back home that evening, Emma picked up the bundle of birthday letters.
“Can we read them?”
“They’re yours,” I said.
We sat on the living room floor like the girls used to when they were small, and they read them in order.
On their first birthday, Vanessa wrote about buying three cards and sitting in her car outside the post office, unable to go in.
