Chapter 3
Lily opened the first letter with Enzo the next morning.
Not all forty-seven.
One.
Miriam sat nearby.
So did Greta.
Lily carefully tore the top edge.
Enzo unfolded the pages.
Mara’s handwriting hit him with a force he had not expected.
He knew the slant.
The way she crossed her T’s too high.
The tiny circles she put over lowercase I’s when she wrote quickly.
The letter began simply.
Enzo, I don’t know whether you will read this.
He stopped.
Lily looked up.
“Daddy?”
“I’m okay.”
He continued.
Mara wrote that she had received the message from his attorney.
She understood Enzo wanted distance.
She would respect it.
But she begged him not to tell Lily that she had stopped loving her.
Enzo stopped again.
“What attorney?” Miriam asked.
“I never sent one.”
The letter continued.
Mara said she would remain away from the estate because she had been warned that approaching could create “serious custody consequences.”
She asked for photographs of Lily.
She asked whether Lily still slept with the stuffed rabbit missing one ear.
Lily ran upstairs and came back carrying that exact rabbit.
Enzo could barely breathe.
Miriam read the final paragraph.
Mara asked Enzo to reconsider the “no-contact position” once emotions settled.
There had never been a no-contact position.
Not from him.
Miriam asked permission to open another letter.
Enzo agreed.
The second was written two months later.
Mara said she had received no answer.
She asked whether Enzo had read the first.
She provided a post office box.
Then came a sentence Miriam underlined.
I sent another copy through Mr. Callahan because I was told direct correspondence might be discarded.
“Who is Callahan?” Miriam asked.
Enzo knew.
“Family attorney.”
“Still practicing?”
“Retired.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
That became the first clue beyond the hidden letters.
Mara had tried another route.
If Lucinda alone intercepted the estate mail, the copy sent through an attorney should have reached Enzo.
It never did.
Miriam opened a third letter.
Six months after Mara left.
I received your second refusal. I will stop asking to come home, but I will keep writing for Lily. Someday she deserves to know I tried.
Enzo’s face changed.
“My second refusal?”
Miriam looked at him.
“You never sent a first.”
“No.”
“Or a second.”
“No.”
The room went quiet.
May you like
Someone had not merely prevented Mara from reaching him.
Someone had been answering her.
