Chapter 13 - LETTERS FROM TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS
The first letter arrived six weeks later.
Vincent wrote about ordinary things: the library, the terrible coffee, a man who taught him to repair broken radios, and the strange comfort of having no one flatter him.
He did not ask Tessa to forgive him.
He asked how school was going.
She answered between clinical rotations and late-night study sessions.
She wrote about the first patient who thanked her for listening. About the bus she missed in a snowstorm. About Leo's bakery selling out of sfogliatelle before noon.
She wrote about how difficult it was to learn medication calculations after twelve hours on her feet.
Vincent replied with a page of encouragement and a joke so bad she read it aloud to her classmates.
Their correspondence continued.
Some letters were short.
Some were angry.
Tessa challenged him when he described his old associates with nostalgia. Vincent acknowledged the harm behind the memories rather than defending them.
He told her about counseling and the work he was doing to understand the beliefs that had made cruelty seem practical.
She told him about learning to set boundaries without apologizing.
Neither made promises about marriage or forever.
Tessa dated once, briefly, and wrote honestly about it when the subject came up. Vincent admitted the news hurt, but he did not demand explanations.
She was free.
That freedom mattered more than any declaration he could have made.
By the time Tessa graduated from nursing school, Vincent had completed a substantial portion of his sentence and remained committed to restitution efforts through his legal representatives.
She mailed him a photograph from graduation.
In it, she stood beside Leo beneath a banner of blue and gold, wearing a white uniform and a smile so wide it made her cheeks ache.
Vincent kept the photograph in a book.
May you like
On the back she had written:
You once asked why I helped you. I helped because you were human. I hope you keep remembering that everyone else is too.
