There was no fire, only a scorched power strip beside his desk. I yanked the cord from the wall.
Then I saw the photo.
The prom picture.
Livia smiling beside Liam, already hiding a secret.
My legs weakened, and I sank onto his yellow beanbag chair.
Something underneath me felt strange.
Too soft in one spot.
Too hard in another.
I flipped it over.
A long seam ran across the bottom, stitched with bright red thread.
Liam had never known how to sew.
But Livia had.
My hands trembled as I pulled the thread loose.
The fabric tore open.
First came pale blue satin.
Then my daughter’s prom dress slid into my lap.
After that came envelopes. Dozens of them. All addressed to Liam.
Then photographs. A courthouse picture. A sonogram. A hospital bracelet. A tiny photo of a baby in yellow.
Finally, one sealed envelope fell near my foot.
On the front, Livia had written:
Mom — only if she can listen.
I screamed.
John found me on the floor twenty minutes later, surrounded by letters.
I held up the dress.
“She wasn’t taken,” I whispered.
John picked up the courthouse photo.
“Mitchell?”
“They’re married,” I said.
I opened the first letter with shaking hands.
Livia had written to Liam, asking him
Another letter said Mitchell had begged her to call me.
He had told her I loved her.
But Livia wrote:
That’s the problem. She loves me like a locked door.
I kept reading.
Natalie had opened the door to Livia in the middle of the night and taken her in without blame, without judgment, without demanding answers.
I wanted to hate Natalie.
Instead, shame burned through me.
The sonogram was dated six weeks after prom.
The hospital bracelet showed that Livia’s baby, Rose, was already three months old.
In one letter, Livia wrote that after giving birth, she wanted me so badly she dialed half my number. Then she remembered something cruel I had once said about another pregnant girl, and she hung up before the call went through.
John whispered, “Open the one for you.”
I didn’t want to.
Which meant I had to.
In the letter, Livia asked me not to punish Liam. She said she had a daughter named Rose, named after my mother, because she wanted one piece of home that did not hurt.
Then she wrote the line that broke me:
