falls in love with my son, make sure she knows she is free to leave.
I stared at the words.
Jonah swallowed.
“My mother told me about this note after Richard was arrested. She said she wanted you to have a choice, even if she had made the wrong decision by involving you.”
I felt tears gathering in my eyes.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I don’t want you to stay with me because of a contract. Or guilt. Or everything we’ve survived.”
He squeezed my hand.
“You
came into my life because you needed money. I came into yours because I needed someone to believe in me.”
His voice broke.
“But neither of us owes the other a lifetime.”
I looked at the man I had married behind scratched prison glass.
The man who had remembered my brother’s birthday.
The man who had sent me handwritten letters when he had almost nothing to give.
The man who had finally come home carrying a black box full of secrets.
And I realized that the beginning of our story
