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“Robin—”

A strangled sound escapes me as I push myself up from the dirt, my vision blurred by tears.

“She was kidnapped, Cooper. She was kidnapped and brainwashed by your uncle and has been rotting in a state psychiatric facility for the last two decades, a shell of herself. Absolutely gutted. And I saw him. I saw him in the papers, on the news, after she was found.”

Twenty One

Present

Ishudder at the memory. At the hurt and guilt I felt. I could have saved Amelia, not from her son, but maybe just soon enough so that she wasn’t as damaged from the ordeal as she was. She might have had a chance to come through the ordeal…live a normal life…like Nora.

But no, she was too far gone when they found her. Too brainwashed in her conviction that her abductor was truly the love of her life.

I’m embarrassed to say that it brought Cooper and I closer together instead of further apart. That we worked hard to heal each other in the months that followed. Instead of being repulsed by his family.

Unable to staunch the compulsion, I read a little more.

Memories tickle the edges of my recollection. Sometimes, I can’t write fast enough to keep up with them. You gave me so many.But one stands out and begs for my attention often. Do you remember the day you asked me if I loved you?

I’m certain you do. I’m also certain my reaction was the catalyst to our end. It was only a question. One you needed an answer to, to be secure, to feel safe and loved and cared for. But it caught me off guard.

I didn’t know what to say.

So I said nothing at all.

There is no room for silence to be misquoted. The thing is, I didn’t know. Was it love? Was it lust? Would my passion, my infatuation with you, wane, burn out? I had nothing to compare my feelings to.

But it hurt you. I could see it in the way your mouth twisted itself out of shape, as though you’d just tasted something unpleasant. And I didn’t know how to make it right. I didn’t have the ability to analyze my emotions. To explain in certain terms what you meant to me. For that, I am sorry.

“If there’s anything you want to tell me, now’s the time.” There was so much I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Robin, you were the only pure thing I had, and I wouldn’t saddle you with the weight of my sins.

I needed you, the burning desire inside my chest. The fire in my heart to remain intact. Do you remember saying that?

I do.

I paused. Silence eating up the oxygen between us. Your face fell. Shoulders slumped. I willed the right response to leave my lips, but all my words sat stuck on my tongue as you packed up your strewn clothes from the floor.

A reminder of the fervor from the night past.

Love.

Such a foreign concept to me. Does anyone really love? Is anyone really capable of giving that all-encompassing idea to anyone else? Did I even believe in it?

Thoughts and idealism and realism kept me imprisoned to a solitary spot on the floor. It felt like the carpet shackled my feet.

You left.

You left.

You left.

Because I didn’t say a thing.

A knock rattles the door, startling me, and Flash leaps from the couch and bounds for it. That little traitor lets them know I’m close behind him with excited barking.

“Hold your horses,” I call. I shove the letter into the drawer of the table on my way.

The girls file in. The scent of takeout fills my kitchen, cartons are spread out across my dining table like an offering.