Chapter 2
PART 4
The first sentence made my stomach drop.
I know what we did to you.
Not “I’m sorry you feel hurt.”
Not “There seems to have been a misunderstanding.”
Not even the familiar “We did the best we could.”
I know what we did to you.
I stood in the hallway outside my condo with my suitcase still beside me, Tokyo baggage tag hanging from the handle, and read those seven words three times.
Then I kept reading.
Your mother doesn’t know I’m writing this.
There are things I should have said years ago, and there are things I should have stopped. I didn’t. I told myself you were stronger than Vanessa. I told myself you didn’t need as much. Eventually, that became an excuse for giving you less.
I stopped.
Something tightened beneath my ribs.
There it was.
The explanation I had spent years inventing for them.
You were mature.
You were independent.
You understood.
You didn’t need attention.
Every compliment had secretly become permission to neglect me.
I continued.
When you were nine, your mother wanted to cancel the small birthday dinner we had planned because Vanessa had a Christmas recital rehearsal. I agreed.
When you were thirteen, you asked to have four friends sleep over for your birthday. Your mother said Christmas was too expensive. I knew we had already put a deposit down on Vanessa’s summer camp. I said nothing.
When you turned sixteen, I bought the Visa card.
I remember putting it inside the phone box.
I thought it was funny.
I know now that it was cruel.
I sat down on the little bench outside my condo.
That memory had lived in me for eleven years.
The iPhone box.
The anticipation.
The laughter when I opened it.
Dad had laughed too.
Not maliciously.
That almost made it worse.
He had genuinely believed my disappointment was harmless.
The letter continued for four pages.
He remembered things I had assumed everyone had forgotten.
My twenty-first birthday, when they asked me to drive Vanessa home from a Christmas party because they didn’t want to pay for an Uber.
My twenty-third, when Mom gave me a sweater that still had the gift receipt showing it had originally been purchased in Vanessa’s size.
My twenty-fifth, when nobody called until 8:47 p.m. because they were at a Christmas fundraiser.
And then came the paragraph that hurt most.
When you posted the photograph from Tokyo, my first reaction was anger.