PART 8
I kept reading, Jasper’s hand finding mine across the table at some point, though I couldn’t tell you exactly when.
I asked Odile to watch over both of you, because I trusted her professionally and personally more than anyone else I knew, and because some part of me needed to know, even from a distance, that Jasper was safe and loved, even if I’d convinced myself I wasn’t the person who should be doing that loving directly anymore.
I have spent eighteen years in treatment, Foster. I am stable now, genuinely, in a way I wasn’t for a long time after I left. I’ve thought about reaching out more times than I can count, and every single time, I’ve told myself Jasper deserved to be old enough to actually understand this before I disrupted whatever life the two of you had built without me.
I don’t expect either of you to forgive me. I only wanted you to finally know the truth, on his own terms, at an age where he could actually weigh it honestly instead of having it handed to him as a child.
If either of you ever want to find me, Odile has an address. I understand completely if that door stays closed. I have lived with that possibility for eighteen years, and I will go on living with it for as many more as it takes, if that’s what both of you need.
I love you both. I never once stopped, not even during the worst weeks of my life, when I genuinely couldn’t trust my own mind to tell me anything true.
Vivian.
