Vince insisted on funding Mandla’s ARVs and he visited regularly from Cape Town to check on him. I’d never seen a man more crushed or more filled with regret. However evolved Ruth had become in the last year of her life, I knew there was a small part of her that would have been happy to know that Vince was suffering. He refused to listen to any suggestion of his moving on, which was understandable. Ruth was one hell of a tough act to follow. It was harder for him because he thought she was truly gone; he didn’t see her as often as I did because he wasn’t looking for the signs like I was. My sister had taught me well.

She was the red butterfly matching the exact shade of her favorite Dior lipstick, that settled on Zodwa’s wrist as she sat in court to testify against the Coetzee brothers before they were sentenced to twelve years in prison. She was Jezebel’s wet snout against my leg when I heard that the canned-lion-hunting operation had fallen through and we no longer had to live under the constant threat of persecution. She was the voice whispering, and then yelling, that it was time to finally allow Riaan to love me. She was the anger that fueled me to drive to Johannesburg last month, and the courage that fortified me, when I finally confronted Father Thomas after all those years.

Ruth was there with me when I rang the doorbell that day, and I felt her holding my shaking legs up when I didn’t back down in my condemnation of him, not even when Father Thomas started raging, and then still not when he started weeping. Ruth was there when I called it “rape” and knew it to be true, finally laying that burden down to free up my hands so I could embrace the future.

I’m going to be brave today, Ruth. For you.

I pulled my reading glasses and the envelope from my bag, inhaling deeply as I did so in order to steel my nerves. Jezebel huffed reassuringly, leaning in to my leg as though to remind me of the promise of bravery I’d just made.

Have courage, she said, and of course she was right.

I opened the envelope with trembling fingers and unfolded the pages inside, beginning to read the words that were written to me almost three and a half years before.