Chapter 8 - The Letter to Victoria
Victoria wanted to leave.
Dr. Patel asked her to stay.
Not because she had the authority to order anyone.
Because the letter had already changed the emotional temperature of the hallway.
Lily held it.
“It’s yours.”
Victoria stared at the envelope.
“No.”
“It has your name.”
“You can open it.”
Lily shook her head.
“That’s what you did to Daddy.”
Victoria flinched.
Lily handed it back.
The gesture hurt more than anger.
Victoria opened the envelope herself.
Natalie remained across the hallway.
Aaron stood between the two women without meaning to.
The letter was dated nearly three years earlier.
Victoria read silently at first.
Then stopped.
Aaron asked, “What does it say?”
She shook her head.
Lily said, “You don’t have to read it.”
Victoria looked at her.
That permission seemed to undo her.
She sat.
Then began reading aloud.
“Victoria,
I don’t know whether you will ever read this.
I have spent a long time being jealous of you.”
Victoria stopped.
Natalie looked at the floor.
The letter continued.
Natalie wrote that photographs from school events sometimes appeared online through relatives or community pages.
In those photographs, she saw Victoria holding Lily’s hand.
Fixing her coat.
Kneeling beside her at preschool graduation.
“I hated you for getting the moments I lost.”
Victoria’s hands trembled.
“Then one day I realized Lily looked happy beside you.
That hurt too.
But it also comforted me.”
Victoria covered her mouth.
Natalie had written:
“I don’t want to replace you.
I don’t want Lily to lose another mother in order to know me.
If Aaron ever agrees to contact, I hope we can eventually make space instead of fighting over it.”
Victoria stopped.
No one spoke.
The remaining lines were worse.
“Thank you for being there when I could not.
I know gratitude does not erase jealousy.
I’m trying to become honest enough to carry both.”
Victoria folded the letter.
She looked at Natalie.
“Why did you send this?”
“Because I meant it.”
“I told Lily you didn’t want her.”
Natalie’s jaw tightened.
“I know.”
“I hid your letters.”
“I know.”
“Why aren’t you screaming at me?”
Natalie’s voice became sharper.
“Would that help Lily?”
Victoria looked away.
“No.”
“That’s why.”
Aaron watched them.
For years he had imagined Natalie’s return would create chaos.
Yet Natalie was the calmest adult in the hallway.
That realization shamed him.
Victoria looked at Lily.
“I was wrong.”
Lily crossed her arms.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lily nodded but did not say it was okay.
Dr. Patel noticed.
“Lily, you don’t have to accept an apology immediately.”
Victoria’s face tightened.
Lily said, “I don’t.”
“No.”
Lily looked relieved.
Children were often pressured to turn adult remorse into instant forgiveness.
Dr. Patel refused to let that happen.
On the drive home, Lily sat in the back seat.
Aaron drove.
Victoria sat beside him.
The silence was heavy.
Finally Lily asked, “Is Natalie going to come to my birthday?”
Her eighth birthday was four months away.
Aaron’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Victoria stared through the window.
“That’s something we can work toward,” Aaron said.
“Not no?”
“Not no.”
Lily smiled faintly.
At home, she carried the shoebox upstairs.
She arranged the letters in date order with Caroline’s help.
Forty-three.
Not forty.
The earliest was written while Natalie was in residential treatment.
The newest had arrived only weeks earlier.
Lily began placing them in clear plastic sleeves inside a binder.
“What are you doing?” Caroline asked.
“Keeping them safe.”
Caroline smiled.
That evening Aaron found Victoria packing clothes.
He stood in the bedroom doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to my sister’s.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
Aaron’s expression hardened.
“You’re leaving?”
Victoria laughed bitterly.
“Interesting choice of words.”
Aaron knew what she meant.
For years they had condemned Natalie for leaving while ignoring the fact that sometimes leaving a situation temporarily was not abandonment.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
Victoria folded a sweater.
“I need to figure out who I am in this family if I’m not the person standing between Lily and Natalie.”
Aaron sat on the bed.
“I don’t know what happens to us.”
Victoria stopped.
“Neither do I.”
“I love you.”
“You loved Natalie too.”
Aaron looked at her.
Victoria continued.
“Maybe love isn’t the question anymore.”
“What is?”
“Whether you trust me.”
Aaron did not answer.
Victoria nodded.
“Exactly.”
Downstairs, Lily heard the suitcase wheels.
She came to the hallway.
“Where are you going?”
Victoria froze.
“To Aunt Denise’s for a little while.”
Lily’s face changed.
“Because of me?”
“No.”
“Because of Mommy?”
“No.”
Victoria knelt.
“Because I did something wrong and your dad and I have things to work out.”
“Are you coming back?”
Victoria almost promised.
Then stopped.
“I hope I’ll still be part of your life.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Victoria smiled sadly.
“You’re getting very good at noticing that.”
Lily’s eyes filled.
Despite everything, she ran forward and hugged Victoria.
Victoria held her tightly.
“I’m mad at you,” Lily whispered.
“I know.”
“I still love you.”
Victoria began sobbing.
“I know.”
After she left, Lily stood beside Aaron.
The house felt different.
Too quiet.
Lily looked at him.
“Did the letters make everybody leave?”
Aaron knelt.
“No.”
“But Victoria left.”
“Because of choices adults made before you opened that box.”
Lily looked toward the empty driveway.
“Do you wish I never found them?”
Aaron answered without hesitation.
“No.”
That surprised them both.
He meant it.
The truth had damaged the life he built.
But the damage had already existed.
The shoebox had only made it visible.
The next morning Aaron received a call from his attorney.
The family court had scheduled the review.
Natalie’s lawyer was no longer asking merely for therapeutic visits.
Given Aaron’s long history of withholding correspondence and obstructing agreed reunification steps, she now intended to request a formal parenting schedule.
Aaron sat motionless after the call.
The stakes had changed.
For the first time, the court would not only examine Natalie’s past.
May you like
It would examine his.
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