Lake
My dear Alessio…
I start the letter I’ve written at least five dozen times. It never quite delivers what I need it to say, and I’m out of patience with myself. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to say what I want him to know. I want him to know he’s loved, and that I appreciate how he treated me. And that I feel terrible for what those people who threatened me tried to do to him and his family.
The midnight oil burns yet again, and I doubt this letter will ever find its way to you, but in case it does, I hope it finds you and all of yours well.
Our relationship took a bad turn and then got worse before I had a chance to tell you how it all went down. Since I’m aware you’re being watched and that I might be watched now as well, I’ll keep this letter personal and between us. What I already told those who asked me during the interrogation is all they’ll ever know. I swear it.
You sent the lawyers. Thank you.
Thank you for always being kind to me and for watching over me even when I did a poor job of watching over myself. You did your best to keep me out of harm’s way. You couldn’t have predicted what was happening on my end, and I don’t fault you for any of it.
You must know I never wished any harm to come to you or your family.
You have to believe me. You must know I was cornered, with no way out, but I swear I tried to find one. Then my uncle ended up hospitalized.
After that, I worried Prescott would be next.
When you proposed, I knew if I said yes, our union would be used to destroy you. But also, I didn’t want to marry you on false terms or lies. I didn’t want terrible people to hold power over us and what we shared together. You have to know I meant what I said that night.
I love you.
I love you more now than before, because now, I’ve lost you. I miss you. Terribly. It’s pitiful how I can’t stop thinking about you. And it’s even sadder that I’m writing to you instead of buying a ticket for Isola di Monteverro so I could tell you all this in person.
I guess I’ll be a chicken for life.
But in case I summon the courage to send you this one hundredth version of the same letter, and in case you get it, if you ever find it in yourself to forgive me, and if you ever want to see me again, and if you ever want have coffee sometime, I’ll say yes.
I’ll say yes to anything. Everything.
I want to see you again.
I miss you.
I love you.
Forever,
Lake
This time around, I don’t read over what I wrote. I don’t dare, for fear I’ll pull out my editorial red pen and scratch out half the words right before I tear the letter into tiny pieces, then cry about having to go through the pain of writing it all over again.
I’m my own purgatory.
I have to let this go and let Alessio make whatever he wants to make of us. If it’s nothing, then so be it, but if there’s even a small chance he could forgive me, and we could move past what happened between us, it would make all the difference in the world. I want him to take over and steer that thing we had between us wherever he wants it to go.
I fold the letter, put it in the envelope with a stamp, and walk the damn thing outside, where my uncle waits in the car. He just finished his second shift and stopped by my aunt’s house on the way home.
I sit in the passenger seat and hand him the letter. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”
“Lake, honey, you know it’s not late for me.” He accepts the letter and reads the address. “Isn’t Alessio Angelini your ex-boss?”
“Yeah.” My waterworks start up again. “Uncle J, I’m pregnant.”
My uncle searches for tissues in his glove box and finds a pack. Quickly, he hands me one, then rubs my back. “It’s okay. You can be pregnant.”
“Oh, Uncle J, I can’t be. Not with his baby. Not when he thinks I’m the worst person in the world. But when I tell him I’m pregnant, he’ll do right by me and the baby, and it’ll be all the worse because not only have I lied, I’ll also have imprisoned him in a forever he never wanted.”
