Pray for your mama, kid.
Shaking his head all the way to the back porch, Kodiak took a seat on an old milk crate. He drew on his pen, feeling better as soon as the vapor touched his lungs. Ada and Catherine. Two psycho peas in a pod. It sure as hell explained a lot.
He woke up his phone. Glancing at the photo that remained on the screen, he took another hit and closed out the image. Then opening his messages, Kodiak sent one to Kelly.
I love you, baby.
“Linnea.” Well past lunchtime, he took to the stairs to see what she wanted to eat.
The baby was asleep in the spare room.
He poked his head inside his, but she wasn’t in there either.
Linnea sat on the floor in their father’s room. Sheets of paper clutched in her hand, she was crying.
“You wrote me letters.” Glancing up at him, tears rolled down her face.
Sitting on the floor beside her, Linnea put the letter in his hand. He’d written it on her eighteenth birthday. Their wedding day.
Held together by a rubber band, a stack of them sat on her lap. Addressed to Linnea. His handwriting on the envelope.
What the hell?
Private and personal, those letters were meant only for her. When she was just a girl, Kodiak sent words of encouragement. How is school? Mind your grandmother. But once they were married, his letters were from a husband who wanted his wife. So, what the fuck was Jarrid doing with them?
Linnea dragged a box from the closet. “Look, there’s hundreds of them.”
“Five hundred and twenty, give or take.”
One every week for the ten years he’d been away.
“I never got any of them.”
“I still have every letter you ever sent.” Every picture you drew me. Every photo. “Remember when I enlisted, and I came to say goodbye?”
“That was a wretched day.”
“You wouldn’t talk to me. Stomped up to your room and cried yourself to sleep.” He let the sheets of paper fall to his lap. “Seems like all I’ve ever done since then is make you cry.”
“You have not,” she said, reaching for his hand.
“I hated leaving you here, but I had a plan to get you out of this miserable place.” His eyes looking into hers, Kodiak tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “And until I could, I needed to know you were okay, so I made Jarrid promise you’d write me every week.”
“Every Sunday, he’d be at the church steps with his hand out.” Softly chuckling at the memory, Linnea retrieved her letter from his lap. “I was so mad that you never wrote me back, I stopped writing them.”
What? But…
“When did you stop?” His brow knitting in thought, he cocked his head.
“Oh, I don’t know. I had to be around fourteen, I think.”
Son of a bitch.
Kodiak huffed out a breath. “The last letter I got was after Catherine died.”
“But how? I didn’t write them.”
“Jarrid or Catherine must have.” He snickered at his own stupidity. He’d been played. “You started typing them in high school to practice for class. Except it wasn’t you, I guess.”