Chapter 9 - THE LETTER FROM JUSTIN
Justin wrote from federal prison two years later.
I almost threw it away.
Then I saw handwriting that looked strangely like Christopher’s.
Not identical.
Enough to hurt.
I opened it.
Helena,
I hated you because my father respected you.
I stopped.
No explanation first.
Interesting.
I spent my life believing respect was supposed to come automatically with being his son.
You earned what I thought belonged to me.
I looked out my kitchen window.
The carriage cottage had become home.
Tomatoes growing badly.
Lucas’s bicycle lying where I had told him fourteen times not to leave it.
Justin continued.
When Dad asked about Lucas, I thought he was pretending you were family to punish me for not visiting.
Maybe sometimes he was.
But I understand now that I gave him absence and expected inheritance to count as relationship.
That sentence sounded painfully like Christopher.
Then:
I told myself the money I took would eventually be mine.
I never stopped to understand that thinking something will someday belong to you does not make stealing it early less like stealing.
Accurate.
He apologized for Lucas’s trust.
For firing me.
For the brick?
No.
He denied ordering it.
Investigators never proved who did.
I believed that uncertainty had to remain.
Not every loose end becomes certainty because a story deserves symmetry.
Justin ended:
I don’t expect you to write back.
I just wanted to say I understand why Dad chose you as trustee.
You took care of a house because it was your job.
Then you took care of what he wanted the house to become because you believed it mattered.
I treated the same house like proof that I mattered.
I was wrong.
I folded the letter.
Lucas entered.
“What’s that?”
“Justin.”
“Is he still awful?”
“Less confidently.”
Lucas smiled.
“Are you going to forgive him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have to?”
“No.”
“Cool.”
Children simplify moral philosophy beautifully.
I eventually wrote one sentence back.
I hope you become someone you can live with when no inheritance is left to impress.
No forgiveness.
No cruelty.
May you like
Enough.
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