Don’t visit places because you think I would have liked them.
Visit them because you do.
Eat something I would have hated.
Stay somewhere too expensive at least once.
Take a train just because the view looks beautiful.
Get lost.
Laugh loudly.
Buy the ridiculous souvenir.
And please, Abigail, stop asking yourself whether you deserve happiness.”
I pressed the letter against my chest.
Then I read the next paragraph.
“The children love you.
But loving them doesn’t mean surrendering your life to them.
They will be disappointed sometimes.
Let them.
They will survive.
And you will still be their mother.”
I closed my eyes.
I had spent years believing that saying no to my children meant I wasn’t a good mother.
Robert knew.
He had always known.
The final paragraph destroyed me.
“My greatest regret isn’t that I didn’t live long enough to travel.
It’s that I helped you believe there would always be more time.
