For a long time, no one spoke.
Finally, I picked up Livia’s letter.
“Where is she?”
Liam shook his head.
“No. Not if you’re going there to drag her home.”
“I need to see my daughter.”
“Then don’t arrive like the reason she left.”
I hated him for saying it.
And I loved him for saying it.
I sat there among the letters and asked the first honest question I had asked in almost a year.
“Tell me how not to scare her.”
Liam’s voice softened.
“Start by not making the first sentence about you.”
The next morning, he gave me the address.
John drove. I held Livia’s letter the entire way.
Natalie opened the door before I could knock twice.
“Camila,” she said.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
Old anger rose in me.
“You had no right.”
Natalie stayed in the doorway.
“Your daughter was eighteen, pregnant, and crying on my porch. I had every reason to close the door because of you. But she wasn’t you. So I opened it.”
