Her reply comes before I get the key in the ignition:
Tomorrow. Love you. Eat something.
My apartment is dark when I get back. Cold. The landlord still hasn't given us a few extra degrees of warmth.
Why in the actual fuck does he think he can keep it sixty degrees in here for all of us?
I drop my bag, kick off my boots, and fill a glass of water from the tap.
The mail is on the counter where I left it this morning. I'd grabbed it on my way out and tossed it down without looking.
Bills, a credit card offer, a flyer for a pizza place on High Street, a coupon mailer addressed to "Current Resident."
And underneath all of it, a white envelope.
No return address. Handwriting I'd recognize in a blackout, in a fire, in my sleep, in the middle of a crowded room with my eyes half-closed.
Blocky capital letters. Blue ballpoint. Penmanship you develop when you have nothing but time, a commissary pen and a concrete wall to write against.
My father's handwriting.
I stand at the counter with the envelope in my hand, and the apartment shrinks around me.
The controlled space. The made bed. The washed dishes.
All of it carefully arranged to keep the chaos out, and here it is, sliding under the door in a number ten envelope with no return address because he knows I won't open it if I see where it came from.
He's reaching outagain.
After nearly a year of silence, after I stopped answering the collect calls and returning the letters, after I told the facility not to forward correspondence, he found a way.
Healwaysfinds a way.
Because men like my father don't understand the word no. They hear it. They process it. And then they decide it doesn't apply to them.
I open the junk drawer in the kitchen.
The one with the takeout menus, dead batteries, and the rubber bands I keep meaning to throw away.
I put the letter inside and shut the drawer.
My hands are shaking.
I press them flat against the counter. Lean my weight into them until the trembling stops.
Breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way my therapist taught me when I was sixteen and the panic attacks came so hard and fast I thought my ribs were breaking.
He can't get to me. He's behind walls and wire and a sentence so long he'll die in there.
He can't hurt me. He can't hurt Mom.
He can't do anything except write words on paper and send them into a world he lost the right to participate in when he picked up a knife in a parking lot and decided a woman's life was worth less than his anger.
The drawer stays closed.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, and set my alarm for 5:50.
The second I get into bed, I pull the comforter up to my chin and stare at the ceiling.