Hazel’s POV
“She wants to see you,” the lawyer said, sliding the letter across the table like it might bite him. “Penelope Chambers has requested a visitation, and legally, you’re allowed to refuse.”
I stared at the envelope for a long moment before I picked it up. Julian sat beside me on the couch, his healing shoulder finally free of the sling, his jaw tight in a way I recognized now as worry rather than the old, unreadable stillness.
“You don’t have to read it,” he said quietly.
“I know,” I said, and opened it anyway.
The handwriting inside was smaller than I remembered, cramped and careful, nothing like the confident scrawl she used to sign gala guest books with. She wrote that she was sorry, that prison had given her time to think, that she never meant for the driver to actually
