“So you trusted the man you were fighting with to deliver your letters?”
“No.”
“I was cowardly.”
“That’s the honest answer.”
“Yes.”
“I told myself you had a father.”
“A life.”
“That appearing again would reopen everything.”
“Then enough years passed that coming back felt harder than staying gone.”
I stared at her.
Adults love to explain abandonment as complexity.
Children usually experience it as absence.
“I was seventeen.”
“I know.”
“You were my mother’s sister.”
“I know.”
“I needed people who remembered her.”
Evelyn started crying.
“I know.”
I hated that she knew.
I wanted new information.
A reason powerful enough to make eighteen years reasonable.
There wasn’t one.
Then I looked at the wooden chest.
“How did Adrian find you?”
Evelyn wiped her face.
“He didn’t.”
“I found him.”
That surprised me.
“How?”
“Your engagement announcement.”
“I saw it online.”
“Your name was public.”
