12. Christine
— ? —
Christine
The envelope arrives by messenger, no stamp.
I almost don’t open it. I’ve been avoiding anything with Benedict’s name on it - legal documents passed through lawyers, interview requests forwarded to PR teams, the constant stream of attempts to contact me that I’ve become expert at deflecting.
But this is different.
No return address. No company letterhead. Just my name, written in his handwriting - the familiar scrawl I used to see on anniversary cards and Post-it notes and the little messages he’d leave on my pillow before early flights.
Back when he still left messages. Back when he still tried.
I take it to my childhood bedroom - the small space Mom converted into a nursery for Isabella, pink walls she never got around to repainting, my high school debate trophies still on the shelf.
The baby is sleeping, finally, after hours of fussing, and I have maybe twenty minutes before she wakes up hungry again.
Twenty minutes to decide if I want to hear what he has to say.
I open the envelope.
It’s not a legal document. Not a contract. Not any of the formal correspondence I’ve been dreading.
It’s a letter.
Christine,
I don’t expect you to read this. I don’t expect anything from you ever again. But I need to say it, even if you never hear it.
I’ve been trying to figure out what to say, and I’ve realized there’s nothing I can say that will undo what I did. Or didn’t do. That’s the real truth, isn’t it? It’s not that I did something unforgivable. It’s that I did nothing at all.
I didn’t wake you to say goodbye.
Didn’t check my phone.
Didn’t hold your hand.
Didn’t cut the cord.
Didn’t see our daughter’s first breath.
I wasn’t there. And I can’t go back.
I have to stop reading. The words are blurring, tears I didn’t know were coming spilling down my cheeks, and I press my hand to my mouth to keep from making a sound that might wake Isabella.
He’s right. That’s what hurts the most. He’s exactly right.
It’s not what he did. It’s what he didn’t do. The accumulation of absences, the weight of empty spaces, the slow erosion of everything we built together.
I force myself to keep reading.
I missed the birth of my child because I thought a deal was more important than being reachable. That’s not her fault. That’s not your fault. That’s mine. And I will hate myself for that for the rest of my life.
I wasn’t with her. I have never been with anyone but you. But I know that’s not the point. The point is I wasn’t with YOU. And I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never doubt where I am again.
You can hate me. I’ll wait.
Forever if that’s what it takes.
But I need you to know - I didn’t know. And the moment I did, nothing else existed.
The paper is shaking in my hands. Or maybe my hands are shaking and the paper is still. I can’t tell anymore.
This isn’t me asking for forgiveness. I know I haven’t earned it.
This is me asking for the chance to earn it. One day at a time. One moment at a time. However long it takes.
I love you. I never stopped loving you. I just forgot how to show it.
I won’t forget again.
- B
I read it three times.
The first time, I feel everything - rage and grief and something dangerously close to hope, all tangled together in a knot I can’t untangle.
The second time, I try to find the manipulation. The angle. The careful crafting of words designed to make me forgive him before he’s earned it.
The third time, I just feel tired.
So tired of being angry. So tired of holding the walls up. So tired of pretending that cutting him out hasn’t left a wound that won’t stop bleeding.
I fold the letter carefully, put it back in its envelope, and slide it into the drawer of my childhood nightstand - the same drawer where I used to hide notes from boys I liked in middle school, secrets I wasn’t ready to share with anyone.
I don’t respond.
But I don’t throw it away either.
***
That night, I dream of him.
Not the ghost he became - the hollow-eyed workaholic who looked through me like I was furniture. Not the desperate, broken man who showed up on my mother’s doorstep begging to see his daughter.
The man he was.
We’re in our kitchen - the one in the penthouse, the one I haven’t been back to since I left - and it’s three in the morning and the city is glittering outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Music is playing from somewhere, something slow and ridiculous, and he’s spinning me in circles while I laugh and tell him he’s being absurd.
“Dance with me,” he says, and his eyes are so warm, so present, so completely focused on me that I feel like the center of the universe.
“We’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“Sleep is for people who don’t have beautiful wives to dance with.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“None of it makes sense.” He pulls me closer, his arms wrapping around me like they’re meant to be there. “I don’t make sense. You don’t make sense. The fact that you chose me makes no sense at all.”
“I didn’t choose you.” I rest my head against his chest, listen to the steady beat of his heart. “I ruined your suit and you wouldn’t go away.”
“Best investment I ever made.”
I laugh, and he laughs, and we sway together in our empty kitchen while the city sleeps around us, and I feel so safe, so loved, so completely certain that this is forever.
“Promise me something,” I whisper.
“Anything.”
“Promise me we’ll always be like this. Even when things get hard. Even when the world gets loud. Promise me you’ll still dance with me at 3 a.m.”
He stops moving. Tips my chin up until I’m looking at him, until I can see the intensity in his dark eyes, the fierce devotion that used to make my knees weak.
“I promise,” he says. “Forever.”
And I believe him.
I believe him completely.
I wake up crying.
The gray light of dawn is filtering through the window, and Isabella is starting to fuss in her bassinet, and I’m alone in my childhood bed with tears streaming down my face and no idea if what I’m feeling is grief or hope.
Maybe both.
Maybe that’s the cruelest part - that they can exist together, that I can mourn what we lost while still wishing we could get it back.
I wipe my eyes. Get up. Go to my daughter.
She needs me.
He needs me too. But I’m not ready to admit that yet.