Diane's POV
An envelope arrived on a Tuesday morning, four days after we'd laid Sophie to rest. I recognized the handwriting immediately...Liam's careful script, now somehow smaller and more hesitant than I remembered. The prison return address made my stomach clench, but I tore it open anyway, reading through his words with a mixture of exhaustion and indifference.
My dearest Diane... I know I have no right... I'm sorry for not being the man you deserved...
The words blurred together, generic apologies that felt hollow after everything we'd been through. I folded the letter back up and tucked it into the drawer of my nightstand without ceremony.
Four months later, that drawer would be stuffed with similar letters, all expressing variations of the same remorse, the same pleas for understanding. I stopped reading them after the first few. What was the point? Sophie was dead. Mom was broken. No amount of Liam's prison-cell letters could change that.
