My dad was a saint. That was what everyone in our small town said. He was the man who raised his daughter alone after his high school sweetheart died in childbirth. He learned to braid hair from YouTube videos, he never missed a soccer game, and he never dated. When I asked him why, he’d always smile that sad, gentle smile and say, “I already had my one true love, sweetie. And she left me the best part of her: you.”
I grew up idolizing him. We were a team, us against the world.
Yesterday was my 21st birthday. Dad had gone out to pick up the cake and balloons for the party he was throwing me. While he was gone, I went into his closet to look for the old photo album we always looked through on my birthday—the one with the only three pictures of my mother that existed.
I reached for the top shelf, but my hand brushed against a shoebox pushed way to the back. It fell, the lid popping off.
It wasn’t the photo album. It was a stack of letters. Thick, white envelopes tied with a blue ribbon.
I picked one up, expecting to see dates from 21 years ago—love letters from before she died. But my blood ran cold when I saw the postmark.
October 14th, 2024.
Two years ago.
My hands trembling, I checked the others. 2015. 2018. Last month. They were all addressed to him, but the return address was a P.O. Box in a town only two hours away. The name on the return address was “Elena.” My mother’s name.
I ripped open the most recent one.
“David, please. She is turning 21. The agreement was until she was an adult. You promised me that if I stayed away, if I let you raise her without my ‘instability,’ you would tell her the truth eventually. I know you think you’re protecting her, or maybe you’re just punishing me for leaving you, but she has a right to know I am alive. I never wanted to leave her. You made me choose between her safety and my presence. Stop telling her I’m dead.”
The world tilted on its axis. The air left my lungs.
She wasn’t dead. She hadn’t died in childbirth. She was alive, and she had been writing to me, fighting for me, for my entire life. My father hadn’t been a grieving widower; he had been a jailer, keeping me in a cage built of lies so perfect I never thought to check the lock.
Suddenly, the front door downstairs opened.
“Sweetie, I’m home!” his voice called out, cheerful and warm. The same voice that had told me bedtime stories about a heaven where Mommy was watching over me. “I got the red velvet, your favorite!”
I froze. I was sitting on his bedroom floor, the letters scattered around me like shrapnel.
“Elara?” he called again. His tone shifted, sharpening slightly. “Are you upstairs?”
I heard his heavy footsteps hit the bottom stair. Thump. Thump. Thump.
They were getting closer. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I just clutched the letter from the mother I had mourned my whole life, listening to the man I thought I knew coming to claim me again.
