Chapter 13 - CLAIRE’S LETTERS
Julian eventually gave me a box.
Not money.
Letters.
Claire had written them when she was eighteen through twenty-one.
Some addressed to Julian.
Some never mailed.
Ruth had returned them to the Sterling family after Claire died but insisted they remain sealed until Maya reached adulthood.
Then Ruth cut contact.
The box was forgotten in archive storage.
Inside one letter, Claire wrote about me before I was born.
If I ever have a daughter, I hope she grows up believing love is a place you can breathe, not a debt you owe.
I stopped reading.
That sentence sat on the page like something she had written directly into the future.
I thought about Richard.
Olivia.
My marriage.
The years spent proving gratitude.
Then I thought about Lily watching her father hurt me.
My mother had spent her own young adulthood escaping a family that made love conditional.
Without knowing any of that, I had almost repeated it.
I put the letter in Lily’s memory box.
May you like
Not for now.
For someday.
