Chapter 16 - The Messages He Could Not Erase
Severin sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well.
“Tatum went through my phone,” he said.
“She says if I tell the police anything, she'll say the entire loan was my idea.”
“Was it?” I asked.
“No. But I helped her. I know that.”
He had saved their messages to an old laptop after an argument the week before graduation.
He didn't trust himself to keep them on his phone.
Now he feared Tatum knew where the laptop was.
“Get somewhere safe,” I told him.
“Call your lawyer. Don't go back to that office alone.”
For once, he didn't argue.
I sat up all night with a cardboard box of Edwin's letters beside me.
For twenty-nine years, my husband had fixed the things our children broke: chair legs, kitchen faucets, the porch swing.
He had never confused fixing something with pretending it hadn't broken.
At the bottom of the box was a note he'd written during Dahlia's first semester.
When our girl finds her own road, don't stand in the middle because you're scared. Walk to the side. Make room.
I read it three times.
I had spent her graduation standing in the middle of everything.
The next morning I brought Edwin's note to Harper's house.
I didn't ask Dahlia to come home.
I didn't ask for forgiveness.
“I should have protected your celebration by helping you leave it with dignity,” I said.
“I was angry, and I made it about my anger. I'm sorry.”
Dahlia took the paper.
Her eyes moved across her father's handwriting.
“I don't need you to win for me,” she said.
“I need to know I can make choices without you taking over.”
“You can.”
She hugged me then, briefly and fiercely.
It wasn't a clean ending.
It was a beginning.
May you like
As I turned to leave, Dahlia's phone lit up with an email from Severin.
The subject line read: EVERYTHING I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU.
