She was looking for the car registration when she found the letter. Folded, yellowed. Her name on the envelope in his handwriting, from eight years ago. All those fucking promises. The part where he'd said he'd be there — he hadn't been. Two paragraphs in she stopped, because each sentence made the next one worse. It wasn't even that he'd been lying; he'd believed every word while already writing himself out of it. And she'd believed him, for years past the point where a smarter person would have seen it. She shoved the letter back and closed the drawer hard. Eight years and she was still the one standing on a bedroom floor looking at his handwriting. That was the part that wouldn't stop.
