month,” the letter began. “Please do not confuse that financial effort with being a mother to you because your father did that hard work entirely on his own.”
Abigail looked up sharply at me when those words were read, but I remained completely silent.
Harper kept reading the emotional confession. “I left originally because I was deeply selfish. Brandon convinced me that I deserved a glamorous life free from dirty bottles, crying babies, and endless household bills. I desperately wanted to believe his promises, so I packed my bags and walked away from my family.”
Then the tone of the letter shifted dramatically. “However, six months after I left, I tried my absolute best to come back home to all of you.”
My heart instantly stopped beating for a second, and Chloe stared directly at me. “Did she actually try to come back home to us, Dad?”
“No, she never came back,” I answered in total disbelief.
Harper continued reading the handwritten page aloud. Evelyn explained that she had written me a long, heartfelt letter asking if I would ever allow her to return home to help raise the triplets. According to Evelyn, my written response arrived at her apartment two weeks later, and she had preserved that original paper inside the safe-deposit box.
I pulled out the old folded sheet of paper and unfolded it with shaking hands. My full name was typed clearly at the very bottom of the harsh response.
“Evelyn,” the letter read coldly. “You made your choice to abandon us. The girls do not need you in their lives, and they do not even know who you are. Stay with Brandon and leave our family alone forever. If you ever try to contact them again, I will personally ensure they grow up knowing exactly what kind of heartless woman their mother really is. Signed, Lucas.”
Abigail stared at me with wide, shocked eyes. “Dad, did you actually write that to her?”
“I never wrote this letter in my entire life,” I declared firmly, feeling a wave of nausea wash over me.
Chloe took the paper from my hands to examine the signatures closely. “Are you absolutely sure, Dad?”
“I spent twenty-one years holding immense anger toward your mother,” I told my daughters earnestly. “I would tell you the complete truth if I had written
