Page 68 of Contempt

Maybe too short.

And then again, maybe those few sentences were all she could manage at the time. He didn’t know, and since she wasn’t here, he couldn’t ask. He also wanted to know what she was apologizing for—none of what happened had been her fault.

Renzo tucked the first letter away, and picked up the second in the pile. It was dated one week after the first letter had been sent. That likely meant she sent out the second letter before the first had even come back with the Return to Sender stamp.

It, too, was short.

Ren,

I talked to Rose today, and Diego, too. I want to go back to New York just to see them, but I can’t go back because I hate it there, now. No, that’s a lie.

I hate other people who are there, and that hate turns me into someone I don’t want to be. That’s scary—I don’t want to be this person. I don’t know this person.

You know, I still feel alone without you.

I’m always alone now.

Miss you.

Love,

Lucia M.

He folded the second letter up, and stuffed it back into its home. The third letter had been sent after the first had finally come back with that Return to Sender stamp on it. It was short, too, but angry. The fourth was the same, and then the fifth, too. Yet, each time, in between her anger and confusion over her letters being sent back, she kept telling him the same things.

I miss you.

I love you.

I’m sorry.

I’m not me without you.

Renzo was about halfway through the stack of letters when his hotel phone started ringing—he already knew who it was going to be before he picked it up. Rose was the only person he had given it to, and since he was still in New York, he’d decided to let his sister know she could keep calling it, if she wanted.

With a letter in his hand, he leaned over and picked up the call. Balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder as he read through the letter, Renzo said the first thing that came to his mind because he needed to tell someone. Who better than his sister?

“She wrote me letters.”

Sure enough, it was his sister.

“Who did?” Rose asked.

“Lucia,” Renzo murmured, thumbing through the first letter that had been more than a single page. It wasn’t as angry as the last couple, and she’d purposely written that in the first couple of lines. That she wanted to just … talk, and update him on her life with school, and everything else. “She wrote me letters that I never got—they all went back to her unopened. I never saw them, Rose.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-two.”

Rose made a noise under her breath. “Ouch.”

“I don’t know what to do. I mean, I didn’t get them. And it’s obviously something that hurt her a lot, so what—”

“You write her back,” Rose said instantly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Renzo let out a quiet laugh. “Rose, I don’t think that’s what she intended by giving them to me.”

“Why not? That’s obviously what she wanted when she first sent them. That’s the point of writing someone a letter, Ren. They will then write you back. So, they might be a little late getting to her—who cares?”