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(The Letter)
Mere weeks after her sixteenth birthday, Anna received a strange piece of mail; a thick envelope from an attorney's office in Dublin. It contained financial documents as well as a smaller, sealed envelope. Anna opened it, pulled out the white piece of paper and carefully unfolded it. Her heart began to drum in her chest as she immediately recognized the handwriting.
My sweet Anna,
I will be blunt. The fact that you are reading this letter means that I have failed you. I hoped to watch you grow and guide you in life, but deep in my heart I always feared that I would not be given the opportunity, and so I wrote this letter.
Your father is involved in things that I have never condoned. When you and your sister were little, I turned a blind eye to it. It was a mistake. Now, he's teaching Nina, and she's taken to his teachings much more readily than I could have anticipated.
I don't want either of you to be brought up the way your father was, but Nina is comfortable, she wants to stay, and I can't leave her. Leaving her behind would be like leaving half of my heart. I am deeply sorry if my decisions have harmed you.
When I look into your eyes, and I see the joy you find in the world, the tears you cry when you are sad, I see that there is hope for you. I see that even if I am gone, you can be different from your father if you choose.
If you are reading this letter and my instructions were followed, you are sixteen years old; it is time to think about your future.
Enclosed, you will find documents to a bank account that you will be able to access on your eighteenth birthday. My father put it in my name hoping that one day, I'd be sensible enough to leave Richard and start a life somewhere else. As you know, my father has passed on, and I have failed, so I'm putting the account in your name.
Use that money in whatever way you see fit, I trust that you will make better decisions than I ever could. Do what you want, but please be happy, my darling.
I hope this will atone for my failings in some small way.
I will love you always.
Anna's hands shook as she read the letter again. She gave the documents a second look. It was a lot of money; it was a way out.
She read the letter over and over that day. When she had memorized every line, she found a safe place to store it. She put in a box full of old photographs knowing that Nina and Richard would never look through it as neither had room for sentimentality. She read the letter often and looked in the box every day just to make sure it was still there, to make sure it was real. She read it as she counted down the months, then the weeks, and finally the days until her eighteenth birthday. The day when she would be free.