“Did you ever hear that from Ryan himself?”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“No, Chloe. I never heard his voice again after he was nine.”
My chest tightened.
“Why didn’t you try harder?”
Elaine took a shaky breath.
“Because Patricia told me that if I kept contacting Ryan, she’d tell him I was the reason his father left. She said she’d make him hate me.”
I felt cold.
“Did you believe her?”
“I didn’t know what to believe. I was young, and I thought eventually Patricia would calm down. By the time I realized she might never let me see him, years had passed.”
“Do you have anything that proves you tried to contact him?”
“I kept everything.”
Every birthday card. Every returned letter. Every photograph. Even the receipts for presents she had purchased but never managed to deliver.
Elaine had saved nearly twenty years of memories for a boy she believed no longer wanted her.
