Aunt Lorraine.
I felt physically sick.
Lorraine had been dead for six years.
She had helped me through custody hearings, watched the girls when I worked late, and sat beside me when I signed the final adoption papers.
The idea that she had hidden Elodie’s attempts to contact us made no sense.
Until Brooke explained what they had found.
Lorraine’s son still owned the house.
After meeting Elodie, the girls contacted him and asked whether any of Lorraine’s old papers remained.
He had several boxes in storage.
Inside one was a bundle of unopened letters tied together with an old elastic band.
Every envelope was addressed to me.
Twenty years of certainty cracked in a few minutes.
After the wedding guests left, the girls, Elodie, and I went to Lorraine’s old house.
Her son had placed the box on the dining table.
The first card was marked for Paige, Holly, and Brooke’s first birthday.
Another was for Christmas.
There were letters asking whether Paige still had the tiny birthmark behind her ear, whether Holly still curled her toes when she slept, and whether Brooke still made a soft squeaking sound when she hiccupped.
Those weren’t details Elodie had invented years later.
They were things she remembered from the first hours of her daughters’ lives.
Lorraine had kept every letter.
Her son sat with us, pale and embarrassed.
He remembered his mother mentioning Elodie years ago.
Lorraine believed the girls finally had stability and that Elodie returning would only damage them. She thought I would weaken if I knew my sister regretted leaving, so she made the decision for me.
I was furious.
Lorraine had stolen a choice that belonged to me and, more importantly, to the girls.
But I refused to let the discovery turn Elodie into an innocent victim.
“You sent letters for three years,” I told her. “What happened during the next seventeen?”
She didn’t hide behind Lorraine.
That mattered.
Elodie admitted that at first, every returned letter felt like proof that I hated her.
After several years, shame became easier than courage. Instead of appearing at my door and risking rejection, she moved again, found work, and built a quiet life in another state.
“Eventually it hurt less to tell myself you’d made the decision for me than to admit I was too ashamed to face you.”
Nobody rushed to comfort her.
