I felt sick.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because Michael wanted to take Ryan with him when he left. He believed Patricia was becoming too controlling. They fought about it constantly.”
Elaine wiped her eyes.
“Michael wasn’t perfect, Chloe. He had his faults. But he loved Ryan. He wrote this letter after he realized Patricia would never let him see his son.”
I opened the envelope carefully.
The letter was dated almost twenty years earlier.
Michael had written that he was sorry for leaving, that he hoped Ryan would someday understand, and that he would never stop loving him.
At the bottom was a sentence that made my hands tremble.
Elaine, if Ryan ever asks why I left, please tell him I did not leave because I stopped loving him. I left because I was afraid that fighting his mother would hurt him more than losing me.
There was more.
