Chapter 41
Jasper rose early, as he often did. He had come to treasure the quiet, fleeting moments before the house stirred—the hush of morning, the way the light crept softly past the curtains, and most of all, the warm weight of Emmeline in his arms when she first awoke. Sleepy, small and soft, and still flushed with dreams, she would reach for him with outstretched arms and curl against his chest like a kitten.
She would be one in just a few weeks. One. He could hardly fathom it.
There was so much he had missed.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw and exhaled slowly. Abigail had said little the day before. They had received Philip's letter in the late morning, the announcement of a safe delivery—Sophia had given birth to a healthy son. A nephew. Abigail's face had lit with joy when she'd read it, the smile gentle and full.
But later, he had seen the shift. That quiet fall of her eyes, that inward retreat. A shadow of sorrow beneath her joy.
She had drifted through the rest of the day like a ghost in her own skin. Polite. Present. But not entirelythere.
He had not pressed her. He had learned better.
Now, as he crossed the room to dress, something on the floor caught his eye—just inside the threshold of his door.
A letter.
He bent to retrieve it, and his breath caught when he saw his name written in her handwriting. Her hand.Shehad written to him.
Abigail.
She had never written to him before—not once replying to the many letters he had given her since finding her at Bramblewick after Christmas.
He sat down slowly at the edge of the bed, the envelope resting in his lap. For a long moment, he simply stared at it. A part of him feared it might be a goodbye. Another part, foolishly hopeful, feared it wasn't.
And then he read.
He read every word, twice. Three times.
By the time he reached the final line, his throat was tight. Her pain was a living thing on the page, pulsing through the paper. She had told him her truth—unvarnished, unsoftened. And he felt the weight of it settle across his shoulders like a mantle.
He did not deserve this letter. But she had written it anyway.
And so, with reverence, he reached for paper and pen.
My darling Abigail,
You do not owe me a single word—and yet, you gave me so many. I've read them all, again and again, and I will keep them. Not as proof of punishment, but as a map of your truth. And I thank you for sharing it.
I won't insult you by asking for forgiveness—not now, perhaps not ever. I know I cannot undo what I've done. But I want you to know this: I do not expect you to forget. I do not want you to.
I want you to remember—but not with rawness. Let time, and all the ways I will strive to show you my love, my remorse, and the truth of who I am now, wear down the sharpest edges. Let the past lose its power to wound—not through forgetting, but by surrounding it with something steadier, something kinder.I want to build a present so safe, so steadfast, that even our worst yesterdays cannot shake it.
You wrote of the fog. The hollowness. I cannot read that without ache. I cannot know that I left you in that place—body and spirit—and not feel the shame curl deep into my bones. If I could go back and carry even a piece of that weight for you, I would. Every day.
But I cannot change what was.
All I can do now is offer you what is—and what could be.
Each morning, I hold our daughter—soft and warm from sleep—and I marvel. I marvel at the fact of her; at the strength it took for you to bring her into the world. I marvel that you survived me. That she survived me. And I think: if there is any grace in this world, it is that I was given a second chance to know her—and to know you again, even in silence.
When we are old—seventy, perhaps—I want us to look back on all of this. Not to forget the pain, but to count the blessings we hold in our hands because we remember what it was to hold nothing. To remember a time when peace felt out of reach. I want to look across from you one day, when our hair is silver and our granddaughter is dancing in the garden, and I want to see not just survival in your eyes, but joy—soft at the corners of your eyes, warm at the curve of your mouth. Joy earned, fought for, and kept.
You once believed in soulmates. In the kind of love that could weather anything. I don't ask that you believe again. I only ask that you watch. Watch who I am now. Let me be the man who proves that kind of love might still be possible.
Yours,
