Inside were twelve wrapped presents.
Each one had my name written on it in Chloe’s handwriting.
Underneath them were cards.
Twelve birthday cards.
One for every birthday I had celebrated during the years we had supposedly hated each other.
Every card was addressed simply to:
Alice.
I opened the first one.
Chloe thanked me for the lasagna I used to make on Sundays.
She mentioned the hug I gave her at the wedding.
She wrote:
“I hope you’re okay.”
I opened another.
She had written it when she was twenty-two.
She apologized for being distant when she first went away to college.
Then she asked whether maybe the two of us could talk.
I had never received it.
None of them.
Every single card had been returned.
At the bottom of the box was a bundle of letters secured with a rubber band.
College addresses.
Denver.
Portland.
Different years.
Different homes.
All written to me.
All stamped:
RETURN TO SENDER.
Then I noticed something.
The handwriting on the return markings.
I knew it.
I had looked at it on grocery lists and birthday cards for twelve years.
It was David’s.
I held up one of the envelopes.
My hands had stopped shaking.
I was beyond shaking.
“You returned these.”
David lowered himself onto the couch.
“Alice…”
“You sent them back.”
He didn’t answer.
“This is my name. Our address. Chloe wrote to me, and you sent everything back.”
“Alice, listen—”
“Say it.”
He looked at the floor.
Finally, he whispered,
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you.”
I stared at him.
“And losing her.”
“David.”
His voice cracked.
“I thought the two of you would become closer to each other than either of you were to me.”
The room went silent.
I couldn’t even process what he had just admitted.
“You told me she hated me.”
“I know.”
“You told me she said she couldn’t stand having me in this house.”
“I know.”
“You said you two had some huge argument.”
David looked away.
“There wasn’t really an argument like that.”
My stomach turned.
“What did you do?”
He covered his face for a moment.
Then finally said it.
“I told Chloe that you found her exhausting.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“I told her you wanted the house to yourselves.”
My voice dropped.
“You told a seventeen-year-old girl who had already lost her mother that her father’s new wife didn’t want her around?” People& Society
“I panicked.”
“She was a child.”
“I know.”
“And then you told me she hated me.”
“I thought it would blow over.”
“How?”
“I thought eventually I’d fix it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Instead, every year you sent her letters back.”
David said nothing.
“And you sent my gifts back too, didn’t you?”
His silence answered.
I sat down on the rug beside the box.
Thirteen years.
Thirteen birthdays.
