Chapter 3 - Letters Never SentElena found sanctuary three hours north, in a small Hudson Valley rental cottage surrounded by wild hydrangeas and towering hemlocks. Her aunt owned the property, a modest saltbox house with weathered porch planks that creaked pleasantly underfoot.
Her days were slow, dictated by prenatal vitamins, quiet walks down gravel roads, and the heavy, shifting life inside her. Every evening, she sat by the bay window with a journal, drafting letters she never intended to mail.
“Dear Julian,” she wrote one rainy dusk, watching mist roll over the hills. “I did not leave to punish you. I left because staying made me an accomplice in my own erasure. I watched you look through me until I began to feel invisible. When this boy comes, he deserves to see both of his parents looking directly into his eyes, not past them at a telephone screen.”
She placed her hand over her belly as a sharp kick stirred beneath her ribs. Tears gathered, but she wiped them away with steady resolve. Love had never been the issue between them; the issue was the slow, toxic decay of priorities. She would not return to a partner who treated life as a transaction to be optimized.
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