When Sandy came home, he found Kirsten on the couch, visibly upset.

"Aw, honey, what's wrong? What are you reading?"

Kirsten held up a piece of paper. "Dawn's letters."

Sandy was surprised. "He gave them to you?" He sat next to Kirsten on the couch and picked up a letter himself. "Things went well between you two then?"

Kirsten laid her head on Sandy's shoulder as he put his arm around her. "Oh Sandy, it was awful. There was lots of yelling, anger; nothing was resolved. And these letters..."

"How bad are they?"

"Listen to this: I miss you so much, Ryan. They can never love you like I do. They don't know you like I do. Come back and things will be better. Things will change. They won't even notice you've left – not like I do. You're all I have left."

"She really does a number on him, doesn't she? But that doesn't sound like what Seth said he saw. I thought he said she was mean."

"Oh, there are those ones too." Kirsten shuffled through the letters on the table until she found the letter she was looking for, then leaned back into Sandy. "She'll beg him to come back for a few letters and then they'll turn nasty. Here's one." Kirsten started reading from the next letter: You ungrateful little..." Kirsten couldn't bring herself to say the word out loud. "You think those rich...care for you? They're just using you to make themselves feel better. Who could love a ... screw-up like you? You think money can make things better? You'll always be a low-life Atwood – scum, trash. You'll end up rotting in a cell like your father and your brother, and no one will care. Not even me. So when your do-gooder family has had enough of you, don't come crawling back to me."

Sandy squeezed Kirsten closer. "Wow."

"This is what he grew up with. If she can say these things to him in a letter, what did she say to him growing up? What were we thinking, Sandy? Can we really undo 16 years of..." Kirsten motioned towards the letters, "of this?"

"We're trying, Kirsten. Do you want me to go talk to him?"

"No, I think I'd better finish what I started. I'll talk to him when he gets back."

Sandy looked alarmed at this.

"He left after he gave me the letters."

"He left? Is he coming back?"

"Why wouldn't I come back?" Sandy and Kirsten looked up to see Ryan standing at the doorway. Ryan just shook his head and went to the pool house.

Kirsten gathered up the letters and followed Ryan out to the pool house. She knocked on the door and then poked her head in. "Can we talk?"

Ryan shrugged. "Will you listen? Why would you think I wouldn't come back?"

"We just read these letters." Kirsten set them down on Ryan's desk. "If you believed what your mother was saying, about you, about us..."

"Those letters..." Ryan ran his hand through his hair. "They're just...they're just Dawn. They don't mean anything. At least, not what you think."

"How can you say that, Ryan? Those letters are awful. They're..."

"Kirsten! Will you just listen?" Ryan was getting frustrated again. He took a deep breath and sat down on the bed. "What's in the letters isn't important to me."

"What do you mean?" Kirsten leaned back against the desk.

"The letters let me know how Dawn's doing...what Dawn's doing."

"I don't understand."

"I know. I was wrong to give them to you, without explaining them. But I was pissed off – you weren't listening to me and jumping to conclusions...if you wanted to think the worst, I was going to let you."

"I'm listening now, Ryan. What explanation can make those letters better?"

"My mom can actually be nice when she's sober." Ryan smiled wryly, "It doesn't usually last long, though." His face dropped again. "When she drinks, she gets all weepy and sentimental, regretting all the bad stuff that's happened, swearing it'll get better. It never does. It gets worse first. She moves on to coke, and turns mean." Ryan came out of his thoughts and looked at Kirsten. "Then she'll clean herself up for a while and the cycle starts again."

"So you use the tone of the letters to know how she's doing."

"Pretty much."

"And what she says doesn't get to you?"

"Sometimes," Ryan admitted. "But you and Sandy and Seth have done more for me in the past two years than anyone has done for me my entire life, including my mom. You've given me the chance to prove what I can do. If someone told me two years ago that I'd be attending USC on a scholarship, I'd have laughed in their face."

Kirsten smiled at Ryan. She realized he wasn't mad anymore; at least, not at her. And she hadn't been listening to what he was trying to say. She still wanted to ask him about the graduation speech but she didn't want to ruin the truce they seemed to have. She sat beside him on the bed and put her arm around his shoulders. "I'm sorry about your mom."

Ryan looked over at her. Was she sorry that his mom abandoned him? Sorry that she didn't write nice letters? Sorry that she was strung out on drugs and that Ryan was worried about her? Or just sorry that she wasn't the type of mom that Kirsten was? He gave her his half-smile. "Me too."

Kirsten squeezed Ryan's shoulders. Then she got up and started to leave the pool house. She turned back to him and said, "You know, Sandy's still going to want to talk to you about..."

Ryan cut her off. "Yeah, I know. Just...later? I think I'm going to do some homework now."

"OK."
Kirsten was gardening out front when Seth came home.

"Hey, Mom. How are things?"

Kirsten sat back on her heels and smiled. "Pretty good, Seth. Did you have fun with Summer at the mall?"

"Sure, if you call trailing behind Summer, carrying her bags, and spending half an hour trying to decide between the mauve or lilac lipstick fun, then yes, we had fun. I mean, they're both purple – what difference does it make?" Seth glanced toward the house. "Hey, did you talk to Ryan yet about the letter?"

"Yes, I did. And it's nothing to worry about."

"Really? Are you sure he wasn't just saying that? Did you actually see the letter?" Seth couldn't believe his mother could blow it off so easily.

"Seth, he explained it to me and I believe everything's fine. If he wants to explain it you, that's up to him. But it really doesn't seem like anything to worry about."

Seth had to trust his mother's instincts. "OK. So he's not mad I read his letter?"

Kirsten laughed. "I wouldn't go that far. You may have to explain that to him."

Seth went into the house and found Ryan watching TV. "Hey, man."

Ryan kept flicking the channels and wouldn't look at him. "Hey."

"Sooo...you mad at me?"

"Let's just say you're lucky you weren't here earlier when I was looking for something to punch."

Seth was overwhelmed by Ryan's words, until he noticed a smile starting to play at the corners of Ryan's mouth. "Dude, that is so not funny. And besides, you're the lucky one - I could totally take you."

"Sure you could, Seth." Ryan finally looked at Seth. "But seriously, why didn't you just ask me about it?"

Seth sat down beside Ryan. "Well, I read a letter that I wasn't supposed to read, about things that you don't like to talk about. Dude, I didn't want to get punched!"

Ryan nodded. "Fair enough."

"So you're not mad anymore?"

"No. You were just looking out for me. I'm still not used to it, but I'm OK with it."

"Are you going to tell me what that letter was about?"

"Maybe some other time. I've done a lot of explaining today, and I'll have more to do when I see your dad."

"What's that about?"

"Dr Kim."

"Ha! I knew you were lying."

"Apparently, so did your dad. He called Dr Kim."

Seth was dying to know what was going on, but he could tell Ryan wasn't going to tell him anything right now. He picked up a game controller. "Wanna play?"

TBC