Chapter 10 - THE LETTER DANIEL WROTE ME
Luca,
You have every reason to hate me.
That was how Daniel's letter began.
I looked at him.
He looked genuinely stunned.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.”
Fourteen years earlier, one year after Chloe left, Daniel had written to me without her knowledge.
He apologized for the affair.
Not in the shallow way people apologize when they really mean “I'm sorry you're upset.”
He admitted exactly what he'd done.
He also said something else.
He had begun realizing Chloe's story about our daughters didn't make sense.
Daniel wrote that he wanted to establish direct financial support.
He included the name of an attorney.
A phone number.
And an offer to place money into educational accounts that Chloe could not access.
I never received the letter.
Chloe had intercepted it.
“Why?” I asked.
She looked at the floor.
“Because if you spoke directly to Daniel, everything would fall apart.”
Daniel's expression turned hard.
“You told me Luca refused.”
Chloe nodded.
Another lie.
One more brick in the wall she had spent fifteen years building.
But the letter contained something for me too.
Daniel had written:
I know money doesn't excuse what I helped do. I cannot repair your marriage or replace the years you've lost. I can only stop making the situation worse.
I folded the page.
Daniel looked at me.
“I should have contacted you again.”
“Yes.”
“I believed her when she said you threatened legal action.”
“You wanted to believe her.”
He took that without arguing.
“Yes.”
That answer earned him more respect than any excuse would have.
Then Jessi quietly asked:
“Dad, why did you never take Mom to court for child support?”
I smiled sadly.
“I did.”
All six daughters looked at me.
I had never told them.
For the first two years, I filed everything I could afford to file.
Chloe repeatedly changed addresses.
Her attorney challenged service.
Then Daniel and Chloe moved out of state.
My legal fees grew.
Eventually, I had six children to feed and one salary.
I chose groceries over courtrooms.
But I had kept every document.
Every filing.
Every returned notice.
Every unpaid order.
They were in a fireproof box in my home.
Daniel looked toward the $1.37 million account statement.
“If that's money I transferred for the girls, it should go to them.”
Chloe suddenly surprised us.
“Yes.”
Everyone turned.
She removed the condo keys from her purse.
“And the apartment too.”
Jessi frowned.
“What?”
Chloe began crying again.
But this time there was no audience in her tears.
No anger.
No defense.
“I bought it because some stupid part of me thought I could eventually live near you and pretend the first fifteen years hadn't happened.”
She put the keys on the table.
“I don't want it.”
Jessi didn't take them.
Then Chloe said the words nobody expected.
“I want Luca to decide what happens to everything.”
I immediately shook my head.
“No.”
Because there was something my daughters didn't know about me either.
May you like
Something Chloe definitely didn't know.
I wasn't the broke logistics worker she'd left fifteen years ago.
