Back home, the house felt wrong.
His boots by the door. His mug in the sink. The basil drooping in the window.
That afternoon Mrs. Rodriguez knocked and handed me an envelope.
“Your uncle asked me to give you this,” she said softly. “And to tell you he’s sorry. I am too.”
Inside were several pages.
The first line read:
“Emily, I’ve been lying to you your whole life.”
My chest tightened as I read.
The crash hadn’t happened the way I believed.
That night my parents had come to Tom’s house with my overnight bag. They told him they were moving away for a “fresh start.”
They weren’t taking me.
“They said you’d be better off with me,” the letter said. “I lost my temper.”
He screamed at them. Called my father a coward and my mother selfish.
He knew my dad had been drinking.
“I could’ve taken his keys,” he wrote. “Called a cab. Told them to stay. I didn’t. I let them drive away angry because I wanted to win.”
Twenty minutes later the police called.
Their car had wrapped around a pole.
They were gone.
I survived.
Tom explained why he never told me.