Chapter 9 - The Letter
One afternoon in April 2026, a thick white envelope arrived in our Montauk mailbox.
It bore the return address of the Federal Correctional Institution in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
I sat at the kitchen island, holding the letter in my hands for a long moment. Tommy was sitting across from me, working on a robotics project for his new school's science fair, his fingers expertly assembling small circuit boards.
"Is that from Dad?" Tommy asked quietly, not looking up from his soldering iron.
"Yes," I replied. "Do you want me to read it?"
Tommy paused, setting his tools down on the mat. He looked at the envelope, then looked up at me with calm, mature eyes.
"You can open it if you want, Mom," Tommy said. "I don't need to read it. I know what he's going to say."
"What do you think he's going to say?"
"He's going to say he's sorry," Tommy said simply. "Not because he realizes he was wrong, but because he got caught and he's lonely."
I stared at my son, amazed once again by the profound depth of his emotional intelligence. He was entirely right.
I opened the envelope and scanned the three pages of handwritten blue ink. Joe wrote about the cold concrete floors, the terrible food, the regret that kept him awake at night, and his desperate hope that Tommy would come visit him during prison visiting hours.
I folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and placed it inside a storage box in my desk.
"Are you going to answer him?" Tommy asked.
May you like
"No," I said softly, walking over to stand behind his chair, resting my hands on his shoulders. "Some chapters are finished, Tommy. We don't need to rewrite them."
Tommy smiled, reaching up to touch my hand. "Yeah. We have better things to build."
