49. SKYE
SKYE
I waited until the house was quiet.
Justice was still out. Rita was asleep. The girls were in their rooms. I locked my bedroom door, sat down on the edge of the bed, and pulled the envelope out of the pocket I’d been hiding it in since I took it from Storie’s closet.
To Justice.
My hands were not steady. I’d been carrying this thing for hours. I didn’t want to put it off anymore. I needed to know what Storie had been hiding from her father.
I slid my finger under the flap. The anticipation was killing me. What did Storie have on her father?
Dear Justice,
I love you. Please know that before you read anything else on this page. I love you more than I have ever loved any person in my life. Nothing I’m about to tell you changes one second of that. I need you to hold onto that while you read this. Please.
We both know I’m not going to make it. You’re in denial about it and I understand why. You want me to survive this, and I love you for wanting that. But I can feel it coming.
I cannot die with this inside me. I’ve been carrying it too long already, and it’s heavier than the cancer.
So I’m writing it down because I don’t have the strength to say it to your face.
Because you deserve the truth even if it destroys you.
Because God knows I owe you at least that much after everything you’ve given me.
The truth is about Storie.
Do you remember when we separated? Those few weeks after that terrible fight, when I stayed with my mother and you stayed in the house. We were broken. I thought it was over. I really did. I thought you and I were done. I was devastated. I did something I have regretted every single day since.
I slept with someone else. His name was Tavares Mitchell.
It happened once. One time, Justice. One night.
I knew before it was over that it was the worst mistake of my life.
I went back to my mother’s house and cried in her bathroom for an hour and never spoke to him again.
When you called me three days later and asked me to come home, I came.
I came home to you and I never looked back, and I swore I would take it to my grave.
But I can’t. Because the timing was what it was. And when I found out I was pregnant, I told myself it was yours. I told myself the math worked. I told myself what I needed to believe, because the alternative was something I could not survive.
Justice. Storie might not be yours.
I’m pretty sure she isn’t yours.
Please don’t punish her for what I did. She is your daughter in every way that matters, Justice.
You are the only father she has ever known.
You built her. You shaped her. Whatever blood says, you made that girl.
Don’t let this change how you love her. She didn’t do anything wrong. I did. All of this is mine.
And please take care of Dream. Take care of both of them. Love them how you love them now, how I’ve watched you love them every day of their lives, even on the days when I couldn’t be there to help.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know sorry isn’t enough.
I know there’s no version of this that doesn’t hurt you, and I hate myself for that, and I’m asking you to forgive me anyway, even though I don’t deserve it.
You are the best man I’ve ever known. You were the best thing that ever happened to me.
And I wasted a piece of it on one stupid, lonely, broken night that I can never take back.
I love you. Please remember that part. Please remember that first.
Always,
Monica
I sat on that bed for a long time after I finished reading.
The letter was in my lap. Storie wasn’t his. She held onto that secret her entire marriage. Through the kids, the cancer, all of it. Took it to her deathbed and wrote it down because she couldn’t leave without telling him.
And it never got to him, because Storie found it first.
I thought about Storie down the hall. Fifteen years old, reading her dead mother’s confession. Finding out the man she calls Daddy might not be her father. That he raised her, fought for her, went to jail for her. All of it built on something her mother lied about from the day she was born.
What does that do to a child?
Whatever Storie had been before she read this letter, it had broken something in her that was never coming back.
I folded the letter back into the envelope and pressed it against my chest. I tried to think about what to do with it.
I couldn’t think straight. The room felt too small.
I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.
I needed to get it back in her journal before she realized it was missing. I needed to do that tomorrow morning.
Then somebody knocked on my door.
Three knocks, slow and patient. Not Dream’s knock, which was always fast and excited. Not Justice’s, which was one solid rap and the door opening. Not Rita’s, because once Rita was asleep, she was out until the next morning.
I shoved the letter under my pillow.
“Who is it?”
The voice on the other side was calm and steady.
“Hey, Melody Harlow. It’s time we had a real conversation.”
It was Storie. And she knew my real name.