Chapter 9 - The Unsent Letter
A year after the wedding, a thick brown envelope arrived at my office in Beaufort, bearing the return address of the State Correctional Institution in Columbia.
It was a letter from Derek.
I sat at my desk for a long time, looking at his familiar, sharp handwriting on the front of the envelope.
Eighteen months ago, the sight of his handwriting would have sent a sharp jolt of panic through my chest, making my hands shake and my stomach knot up with fear.
Now, I felt nothing. No fear, no anger, no curiosity.
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of lined yellow paper, covered in three paragraphs of cramped, awkward handwriting.
He spoke about his isolation in prison, how his father refused to visit him, how his former friends ignored his calls, and how he had spent three hundred days reflecting on "that night at the St. Regis."
He claimed he was a changed man. He claimed he had suffered enough. He asked if I could find it in my heart to forgive him and support his upcoming parole application.
He concluded with the same words he had spoken in the kitchen three nights before our wedding: "I just want things to go back to the way they were."
I read the letter twice, slow and careful.
Then I reached into my desk drawer, pulled out a small steel pair of scissors, and slowly, deliberately cut the yellow paper into thin, tiny strips.
I didn't write back. I didn't call his attorney. I didn't waste a single second of my life offering mercy to a man who had only ever valued control.
I dropped the paper strips into the recycling bin beneath my desk, swept the dust off my hands, and opened my laptop to review the next six intake files for the shelter.
He had wanted things to go back to the way they were.
He wanted a world where he could slam my face into a wooden board, laugh in front of two hundred people, and expect me to smile and say thank you.
He didn't understand that the girl who had bowed her head in his kitchen was dead.
May you like
She had died the moment her face hit the buttercream.
And the woman who replaced her was never going to bow again.
