Chapter 10: The House She Controlled
Dad called forty minutes after Linda walked out with the letters.
His voice sounded smaller than it had in the kitchen. He said Linda had returned to the house alone, still carrying the bundle. Now she was at the front door, telling him the letters belonged there.
I heard the old house around him: the furnace clicking, a clock ticking too loudly. Then Linda’s voice cut through the phone.
“Tell her to stay out of this.”
Tasha was already reaching for her keys.
“Put me on speaker,” I said.
A pause. Then Dad did.
“Richard, you owe me loyalty,” Linda said. “After everything we built, you don’t get to turn on me because Natalie’s angry.”
The word angry landed with practiced ease, shrinking a broken arm, a stolen childhood’s worth of silence, and a bundle of letters into one unreasonable daughter’s mood.
“I’m not turning on you,” Dad said. “I’m telling you those letters are Natalie’s.”
“They were in our house.”
“They were addressed to her.”
“You didn’t even know they existed.”
“That doesn’t make them yours.”
The words were quiet, but I heard the effort in them. For once, he wasn’t looking at the floor while Linda chose what counted as truth.
Then she said, “You know what happens if you make me the villain.”
“I know what happens when I let you speak for me.”
The line went silent.
Tasha glanced at me. “We’re going.”
I looked down at my splinted left arm. The ache had settled into a steady throb, as if my body were keeping time with the clock in Dad’s house.
“Put me back on,” I said.
“Dad?”
“I’m coming.”
At the house, Linda stood just inside the open doorway with the letter bundle pressed against her chest. She had the ribbon wound tight around it. Richard stood between her and the hall, pale and rigid, his hands hanging at his sides.
The moment she saw me, her face rearranged itself into weary patience.
“There she is,” she said. “The person everyone has to tiptoe around.”
I kept my good hand on the strap of my bag. “Give me my letters.”
“Don’t start.”
“They’re addressed to me.”
Her grip tightened until the ribbon cut into her palm. “You already got what you wanted. You read them. You made your point.”
“No. You took them.”
“I’m trying to stop this family from being torn apart.”
“You mean you’re trying to decide what we’re allowed to know.”
Dad flinched. Linda’s eyes snapped toward him, and for half a second I saw her waiting for him to soften the blow, to translate my accusation into something she could dismiss.
He didn’t.
“She’s right,” he said.
Linda stared at him. “You’re going to do this now?”
“I should have done it years ago.”
The admission didn’t fix anything. It didn’t put the letters back in my hands or make him the father I’d once asked to visit. But it changed the shape of the room. For once, his silence wasn’t helping her.
Linda turned to me. “You have no idea what I sacrificed for this family.”
“I know what you did with my mail.”
“I kept a roof over your head.”
“You hid letters asking Dad to visit me.”
“You were always pulling him away from his own life.”
The words came out before she could swallow them. A flash of satisfaction crossed her face, then vanished. She had said it plainly now. No “misunderstanding,” no story about lost envelopes. She had wanted me kept at a distance.
Dad took one step toward her. “You told me she never wrote.”
“Because you believed me.”
“I did.”
That answer cost him something. I could see it in the tightness around his mouth. But he didn’t use it to excuse himself.
“I believed you because it was easier than asking her,” he said.
Linda laughed once, sharp and humorless. “So now this is all my fault?”
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to make him innocent. And he doesn’t get to make you the only one responsible.”
The bundle shifted in her arms. I reached out with my good hand.
“Let me take them.”
She pulled them away.
“Linda,” Dad said. This time, it wasn’t just her name. It was a boundary, however late. “Give them back.”
“No.”
Tasha stayed near the doorway, watching Linda’s hands and giving me room. She didn’t reach for the letters or tell me what I ought to do. I was grateful for that. I didn’t need anyone else deciding what I could carry.
“Keep them, then,” I said.
Linda blinked, thrown off by the answer.
“I have copies,” I continued. “I photographed what I needed. You can’t take those words away from me.”
For a moment, the control went out of her face. Not shame. Fear of losing the story.
Then she lifted her phone and aimed it at the bundle.
“You think people want to read your private little letters?” she said. “You think this family can survive everyone seeing what you wrote?”
The screen flashed. A message arrived on my phone a second later: a photograph of the letters in Linda’s hands, the ribbon pulled taut across them.
The next message followed.
Withdraw your complaint, or every private detail becomes public.
My throat tightened. I had not decided whether to press charges. I had made a report. Linda knew the difference; she was counting on the fear of what she could expose to make me erase even that.
Dad read the message over my shoulder. He looked at Linda, then at the phone in my hand.
“Is that what you’re doing now?” he asked. “Threatening her?”
“I’m protecting myself.”
“From what?”
“From her destroying everything we’ve built.”
I looked at the letters in her arms and thought of the copies saved elsewhere, proof that she could take paper without taking the truth. It should have steadied me. Instead, every private sentence I’d once written to my father seemed suddenly exposed.
May you like
Linda’s thumb hovered over her screen.
“Withdraw it,” she said, “and maybe I won’t have to show anyone what you wrote.”
