Chapter 5 - The Apartment Above the Laundromat
We left through the service entrance.
Daniel brought the car around. I carried Sarah’s veil in a grocery bag someone found in the catering kitchen.
Thomas sat in the front seat with his hands folded in his lap.
Nobody knew how to begin.
At a red light, he quietly said, “I’m sorry about the cake.”
Sarah looked out the window.
“I hated that cake.”
A sound escaped Daniel.
Half laugh. Half exhale.
It loosened something in the car, but only for a second.
Thomas lived above a laundromat twenty minutes from the hotel.
The stairs were narrow. Sarah gathered her dress in both arms and climbed them without complaining.
Inside was a small apartment with a folding kitchen table, two mismatched chairs, and a couch covered by a clean gray blanket.
Thomas hurried to clear a stack of mail.
“Let me get you somewhere to sit.”
Sarah noticed a photograph on the shelf.
The same little girl in yellow boots.
Beside it stood a small wooden bird with one unfinished wing.
“You made those,” she said.
Thomas followed her gaze.
“Yes.”
“I remember birds on a windowsill.”
His hand stopped moving.
“You used to paint them.”
“Badly?”
“Purple. Every single one.”
She smiled before she could stop herself.
Then the smile vanished.
Thomas brought out a dented metal box.
Inside were envelopes, photographs, court papers, and birthday cards still sealed in their original plastic.
He placed a bundle on the table.
Sarah picked up the first envelope.
RETURN TO SENDER.
The next one carried the same stamp.
And the next.
She opened a card dated the year she turned eight.
I watched her eyes move across the page.
She read one sentence aloud.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but none of this happened because you weren’t worth staying for.”
Her voice cracked on staying.
Thomas stared at the floor.
“I was trying not to speak badly about your mother.”
Sarah put down the card.
“Did you think I didn’t want you?”
“Eventually.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
Then he took a different envelope from the bottom of the box.
This one hadn’t been returned.
He unfolded a single sheet.
Sarah read it.
Her face changed.
“What is that?” Daniel asked.
She passed it to me.
The letter said Sarah had a real father now. That she wanted Thomas to stop writing. That hearing from him made her feel ashamed.
It was signed with her name.
Dated two weeks after her eighteenth birthday.
May you like
Sarah looked at Thomas.
“I never wrote this.”
