I kissed her forehead.
“He’s just trying to figure things out.”
Later, after they fell asleep, I drove back to the farmhouse.
The garden was quiet.
The apple tree still leaned crookedly over the patch of earth where I had dug.
I opened the chest one last time and looked at Carla’s letter.
“You weren’t trying to hurt him,” I whispered. “You were just afraid.”
I closed the lid again.
Fear can make people hold on too tightly.
It can make them protect the people they love in ways that hurt others.
But I knew one thing with absolute certainty as I covered the chest with soil again.
I would never teach my daughters that silence was more important than truth.
Because fear might bury the past.
But eventually, someone always digs it up.
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