Chapter Twenty-One Letters Never Sent
“Sometimes healing means saying the things you never get to say out loud.”
Sunni sat at the kitchen table late that night.
The house was quiet.
The dishwasher hummed. Prince’s music thumped faintly behind his door. Kane’s light was still on.
She looked down at the notebook in front of her—blank pages, but full of everything she never had the chance to say. Everything she’d carried, smiled through, swallowed.
Her hand trembled just a little as she picked up her pen.
She began to write.
Sunni’s Letter (Never Sent)
Marcus,
I buried a man who was still breathing.
I held our babies while they cried for you, believing you were in the ground—while you were across town building another life with a woman who didn’t even know we existed.
I kept your name alive while you lived like we never mattered. You left me drowning in grief you created. Do you know what that does to a woman?
I had to learn how to breathe again. Alone.
You didn’t just break us—you made a home in the cracks like you were never part of what fell.
But still… I hope you find peace. Because hate don’t heal. And I’ve got five hearts to raise into whole people. That’s my only mission now.
Goodbye in full.
-Sunni
Across the house, Kane wrote in her journal.
She didn’t plan to share it.
She just had to let it out.
Kane’s Letter
You told me I was strong like you.
Turns out, I had to be.
Because you weren’t.
I needed you when I started my period. When boys started looking at me weird. When I thought I wasn’t pretty enough or smart enough. Mama was there. You weren’t.
You missed every “first.”
So don’t come around for the “later.”
You lost me when you walked out.
Kane
Prince wrote his in the notes app of his phone, then deleted it. Then wrote it again.
Prince’s Letter
I should hate you.
But I don’t.
I just don’t respect you.
You told me to protect them… then dipped.
I had to grow up overnight, man. I ain’t even get to be mad out loud.
But I’m saying it now—I needed a father. I got a memory.
Don’t come back unless you ready to build from rubble.
—Prince
Bunny used crayons. She wrote only what she could not stop thinking about.
She misspelled some things. But her feelings were loud and clear.
Bunny’s Letter
Daddy,
Why did you go away?
I made you a Father’s Day card. I still got it.
I miss you sometimes. I’m mad sometimes too.
I don’t want to see you yet.
—Bunny
—Bunny
Dexter didn’t write his at all.
He talked it out, alone in the bathroom mirror, pretending Marcus was listening.
Then flushed the toilet like he was flushing the words away.
Natty did not write a letter. She drew one.
Mama stood in the middle of five stick-figure children beneath a crooked yellow sun.
Off to the side, Natty drew one more figure.
A question mark floated over his head.
When Sunni asked who it was, Natty shrugged. “Daddy, maybe.”
Then she folded the picture and tucked it into her sock drawer.
That was all she had to say.
The next morning, Sunni collected the pages from the table and tucked hers in her Bible.
She didn’t need to send it.
Saying it was enough.
And sometimes?
That’s the start of healing.