I thought about the note on the refrigerator. The forged letter. Two hundred and fifty-two deposits. Twenty-one birthday letters that never left her hands. A woman sitting in a parked car six houses from her own children, too afraid to walk up and knock.
“No,” I said.
And I meant it.
Hating Vanessa had been useful once. It got me through two a.m. feedings and overdue bills and school concerts with an empty seat beside me. It kept me standing when I had nothing else left.
But my girls were grown now. I didn’t need anger to raise them anymore.
Vanessa had been robbed of a second chance. And then she had thrown away another one herself.
Both things were true.
Daniel had deceived her. And she had abandoned our daughters.
She had saved money for them. And she had left me to spend twenty-one years doing the real work of loving them.
