I picked the letter back up.
I went to prison for what I did. Not for long enough. Nothing would have been long enough. When I came out, I found that I could not simply walk away and forget. Your father was dead because of me. Your mother’s health was broken because of me. And you, that small girl in the back seat, had lost everything before you were old enough to understand what you had lost.
I could not undo it. But I made a promise to myself that I would spend whatever life I had left watching over you, quietly, from a distance, never letting you know, never asking for anything, never trying to insert myself into a life I had already damaged enough. I did not deserve your forgiveness and I never sought it. I only wanted to make sure that you were never again as alone in the world as I had made you.
When your mother grew too ill to work, there was money that arrived, from a charity you had never heard of, that paid her medical bills. That was me. When you were seventeen and the landlord threatened to evict you both, someone paid the back rent and the notice was quietly withdrawn. That was me. The scholarship that let you finish school, the one they told you had come from an anonymous donor, came from me. I could not give you back your father. So I gave you what I could, in the dark, where you would never have to know that the hand feeding you was the same hand that had taken everything from you.
