Inside the envelope was a single page, handwritten, no letterhead.
Claire read it standing in the entryway while Nathaniel waited, watching her face with the careful attention of a man who had learned that reading her expressions was more reliable than waiting for her to speak.
When she finished, she handed it to him without a word.
He read it, and she watched his face move through something she did not have a clean name for.
The letter was brief. Vanessa wrote with the efficiency of a woman who had always known exactly what she meant.
Claire.
You did not take what was mine. What was mine was never real, and I knew that before you came into it. I am not writing to apologize for things I am not yet capable of apologizing for. I am writing because you deserved to know the truth that ha
