“You never saw me. You barely knew I existed. But you wanted me to tell you about this? Would you even have cared?”

My mom starts to cry. I think I hear her say “Of course I would have,” but it’s so quiet and low it might be my imagination.

My stomach lurches, but I swallow down my guilt. My entire life, my role in this family has been in the background. I’ve spent my whole life making myself small. I spent my entire life thinking I didn’t deserve anything else, because I wasn’t smart enough; I wasn’t talented enough; I wasn’t enough.

After I stop yelling, we’re silent. My mom on the bed, her fragile frame shaking with sobs. My dad stands in front of the fireplace, stone-faced. All the energy drains out of me, leaving me wobbly and raw. I sink down to the carpet, pull my knees in tight, put my head down on them. I whisper into them, “I’m sorry,” over and over again, like I think Jordan can hear me, like if he could, he would care.

Then my dad’s cell phone dings with a text, and he makes a sound like a grunt. “Of course we would have, May. Christ. Look, the prosecutor just texted me. They want those letters, now. We need to hand them over.” He pauses. His voice softens. “I’m sorry you’re upset. I’m sorry you don’t think we gave you a good life. We tried our best.”

I pick my head up off my knees. There are dark bags under his eyes, he looks exhausted. He looks like he’s aged forty years in the past ten minutes.

I nod. Drag my body up off the ground. Say in a monotone, “Okay. I’ll go get them.”

I leave the room without a glance back, go into mine, and pull the letters from under my bed, where I stuffed them four nights ago, before Zach and I went to the jail. Four nights. It seems like a lifetime. I find a shoebox in my closet, place them inside.

When I walk back into my parents’ bedroom, my dad holds out his hand and I put the box in it.

I expect a sense of relief. I expect to feel…well…something. Instead, there’s the same hollow emptiness. The same tightness in the middle of my belly. The letters might be physically gone, but their words are seared into my brain forever.

My dad takes the box, tells us he’s going down to deliver it to the prosecutor now, tells me some bullshit about how he hopes someday I’ll see that he was doing the best he could for Jordan.

He walks out of the room, leaving me and my mom behind.

Chapter Fifty-one