I touched the photograph.
“She looks like me.”
“She does.”
Walter handed me an envelope.
“That’s one of her letters.”
“To me?”
He nodded.
I opened it.
The handwriting was uneven.
The letter was dated when I was six.
She wrote about wondering whether I liked music.
Whether I had a favorite color.
Whether I liked animals.
She wondered if I was afraid of the dark.
Then she wrote something that made my hands start shaking.
She hoped someone was there to tuck me into bed.
I stopped reading.
Because when I was six, someone had been there.
But not for long.
By eight, I was already being moved around.
By twelve, I knew better than to believe promises.
I pressed the letter against my chest.
“I hate her.”
Walter said nothing.
“I don’t even know her.”
“I know.”
“I waited my whole life for someone who wasn’t coming.”
“I know.”
“And now you’re telling me she was writing letters?”
“Yes.”
I cried then.
Not the quiet kind.
The kind that leaves you exhausted.
Walter sat across from me.
He didn’t touch me.
He didn’t try to fix it.
He simply stayed.
Maybe that was the first thing he had done right.
