Chapter 7: Letters Never Sent
1058 Words
Rain began to fall the next morning—not heavy, but persistent, a steady rhythm tapping against the windows of Selina’s apartment. The kind of rain that quieted the city and invited introspection. She sat at her worktable with a cup of warm oolong, tracing the final lines of a revised floor plan for the old house. A reading loft tucked under the eaves. A skylight to let the moon in. A garden path that curved, rather than cut straight through. Soft details. Human details.
It felt strange, almost indulgent, to care so much about something not tied to profit or prestige. But perhaps that was what made it matter.
Her phone buzzed beside her.
Uyen: “Lunch at home today? I made soup. Bring an appetite.”
Selina stared at the message. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. It had been nearly a month since she’d last sat at her mother’s table, and something inside her stirred at the thought—not guilt, but longing.
Selina: “I’ll be there in an hour.”
The smell of lemongrass and ginger greeted her before the door even opened. Uyen’s apartment was a small sanctuary, tucked on the fourth floor of a quiet block with potted orchids lining the balcony.
“You’re early,” Uyen said, ushering her in.
Selina smiled. “Blame the rain. I didn’t want to get stuck.”
They ate in the living room, seated on floor cushions, just as they used to when Selina was younger. Bowls of steaming soup warmed their hands and loosened the conversation.
“You look lighter,” Uyen observed.
“Maybe I’m just tired,” Selina replied.
Uyen raised an eyebrow.
“Okay. Maybe I’m… shifting.”
“Is it Damien?”
Selina paused. “It’s me. And maybe also him.”
After a silence, Uyen rose and disappeared into the back room, returning with a small, worn box wrapped in a blue cloth.
“What’s that?” Selina asked.
“Letters,” Uyen said. “From your father. Written to you, never sent.”
Selina blinked. “He wrote me letters?”
“One every year on your birthday. I found them in the storage unit last week.”
She hesitated before reaching for the box. The envelopes were neatly arranged, labeled by year in her father’s precise, mechanical handwriting. Eight in total.
“Why didn’t he send them?”
Uyen gave a sad smile. “Maybe because apology was never his language. But perhaps memory was.”
That night, Selina sat on her bed with the box in her lap. Damien had offered to come over, but she declined. Not because she didn’t want him—but because this was a chapter she needed to turn alone.
She opened the first letter.
Dated the year she turned ten, it began with formal praise—grades, manners, responsibility. But halfway through, it veered into uncertainty: “I hope you are becoming the kind of girl who does not forget what is owed to family.” No warmth. No signature beyond “Ba.”
She read the second. Then the third. They were all variations of the same echo—expectation masked as affection. Control disguised as care.
But in the seventh letter, she paused. One line stood out: “Sometimes I look at your childhood drawings and wonder if you inherited more from your mother than I allowed.”
Her breath caught.
It wasn’t an apology. But it was an admission.
The next morning, Selina arrived at the old house in rain-soaked boots. Damien was already there, rolling blue paint over a patch of wall.
“Morning, architect,” he said, offering her a brush.
“I brought coffee,” she said. “And questions.”
He glanced at her. “Serious ones?”
“The kind I don’t need answers to yet.”
They worked side by side in the attic for hours. Music played softly from Damien’s phone—old love songs, wordless piano scores, and the occasional jazz riff. It was the first time Selina allowed herself to simply be with him in silence. No need to fill space.
As afternoon crept in, she sat down on the floor and pulled out a folded letter from her coat.
“My father wrote to me,” she said. “Every year. I read them last night.”
Damien wiped paint from his fingers, listening.
“He never sent them. Never really said anything honest. But there was one line—one small line—that made me stop. He admitted he tried to erase the parts of me that came from my mother.”
Damien’s brows drew together. “That must have hurt.”
“It did. But it also reminded me I wasn’t broken. Just buried.”
She looked around the room. “This place... this is the first thing I’ve built where I didn’t have to hide any part of myself.”
Damien reached into his backpack and pulled out a sketch.
“I made something last night. For you.”
It was a charcoal drawing of Selina standing in the attic’s center, hands in her pockets, eyes closed, the sun coming through the window behind her like a halo.
“You always draw me like I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
“I draw what I see,” he said simply.
She didn’t cry. But something inside her melted. A fear she hadn’t known she was still holding.
That evening, as twilight settled, they sat on the front steps of the house. The rain had stopped. The scent of wet earth mixed with jasmine.
Damien reached for her hand. “What happens next?”
Selina looked toward the street, then up at the house, then at him.
“We keep building. With all the broken things. Letters never sent. Houses left to rot. People who couldn’t love us the way we needed.”
He nodded slowly. “And us?”
She squeezed his hand. “We don’t owe anyone an answer but each other.”
He leaned in, forehead resting lightly against hers.
“No masks?” he asked.
“No masks.”
For once, Selina didn’t feel like she was risking herself by choosing connection.
She felt like she was reclaiming her design.
To Be Continued...
- Writer
