told a seventeen-year-old girl who had already lost her mother that her father’s new wife didn’t want her around?”
“I panicked.”
“She was a child.”
“I know.”
“And then you told me she hated me.”
“I thought it would blow over.”
“How?”
“I thought eventually I’d fix it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Instead, every year you sent her letters back.”
David said nothing.
“And you sent my gifts back too, didn’t you?”
His silence answered.
I sat down on the rug beside the box.
Thirteen years.
Thirteen birthdays.
Thirteen years
