Revised: 21/10/24

Chapter 10

Shawn,

I am on a plane right now as I write you this letter and I miss you beyond what I thought you could miss a person.

I want you to know one thing above all others – that your wife, the women you married is a coward and not for one day of our life together did I deserve the devotion which you showed to me.

I do not know why I am writing this letter. Rest assured it is not to ask for your forgiveness as I know for what I have done there can be no forgiveness. Not from you or our parents and least of all from our god.

So why did I do it? Why have I taken the children and left?

Well, I will say on this piece of paper which I have addressed to you what I will and have always been too much of a coward to say to your face.

I have been having an affair. I was a fool. I thought life might be greener on the other side - though I want you to know that is not the case and I regret the choice I made to even begin it every day. I know I will until the day I die.

All I meant to do was to be friends with him. The idea the two of us might turn in to something more never crossed my mind until we already had done and – and that was that.

I tried to end it – I even came pretty close at one time and in my arrogance, I thought that was going to be it. We were done, and we could all go back to living how we had done in the past.

My folly could be forgotten, and I could go back to being the very happy Mrs Brady I have always been.

It was not to be. As you know I am pregnant. And this shames me almost more than anything else – and it kills me to write - that this is not our baby. But mine and his.

Cruelly, if I had my own way, I would go back in time. Make sure he never learnt about the baby. I thought I was doing the right thing when I told him about the little one. But I was not.

Maybe I should not admit this to you even in a letter I never intend to send but if I had my way we would raise it was our own. As a full blood sibling to our wonderful children.

I think in my heart as soon as I learnt I was pregnant that was my plan.

But then the father found out through my own stupidity and he said by hook or by crook he was going to raise this little one of his and if I did not go with him to raise it then he was going to tell you.

And I felt sure if he did then the two of us were going to be destroyed forever, not that we are not already. I guess in my selfishness I wanted to be the one who pulled the trigger on us…

I would not give him the satisfaction.

Shawn, forgive me but I could not see the light go out of your eyes. I could not tell you the truth as I could not bear the idea you might be disappointed in me. It is all so selfish.

And there is nothing I can do to take any of it back now.

The die is cast.

If you were reading this which I hope you never do, I guess the one question in you have is who is it?

Its Victor – which somehow, I know is not going to be a shock to you, though no doubt you are going to be no less horrified. He will look after us, I promise you. I know it is going to be very cold comfort you.

And I can only say once more how sorry I am to you. Whether you believe it or not, I did not ever want it to end as it has done – though this will once more be cold comfort, this is not the way I wanted things to go – and it is not of my choosing.

I hope one day the two of us meet again. Oddly enough, now I am so far away I want nothing more than to sit down and explain everything to you.

To make sense of it all – then to take the children to church and pray for strength.

But this letter has been too much about what I want.

I wish you strength, love and health Shawn – and for life to be kinder to you than I have been.

Despite what you and everyone else must think,

I am still,

Your Caroline.

Mrs Brady bit her lip as she finished her letter.

It was no word of a lie to say some days she did not know on earth it had all begun - how on Victor's return had led to all of this. She could still remember the day Shawn of all people had told her.

Victor was an old friend of both of theirs and her husband had been just as delighted to see him as she had been, they had both meet him before they had married – all three of them had moved in the same circles when they were young… they were friends.

She put her head in her hands… from friendship to leaving Shawn forever.

She did not know how it had come to this - she did not know how any of it had come to this.

X X X

Shawn's mother in the days after Caroline left was forced to watch her son become a shadow of the man he used to be.

Her strong brave boy became a quivering wreck.

Time went on and the police did all they could but it was hard. They had lost the fresh trace that went with a golden hour. And not only that, but the kids were with their mother and it began to look all too much as if she had left of his own accord.

Those spirits of Shawn's just got lower from the moment he found that a lot of his families' possession gone, as he tried to account that his wife left because she wanted too. She wanted them to be far from him – she wanted him to have no idea how his babies were… they sunk lower still when police turned up nothing, to in the end, accepting that there was nothing else they could do. That was when his mother had felt the real fear – because for the very first time, he had done the one thing which he had not ever done before and that was looking for the answer as to what was going on in the bottom of a bottle.

He'd had no where left to go.

For one thing, she knew that he would not find them and that was not her boy – he did not give in to hopelessness. But now hopelessness was his constant companion. It was the day he had said nothing else live for that she had wanted to break him out of his own soul. Her baby was a destroyed man.

As time had gone on the family had got more divided.

Whereas on that first night, they had all been as united, as time went on the Brady's turned on Caroline's family. And they did not want to see each other anymore. The fact that they all understood that they had no idea what she had been planning no longer had any bearing on what they felt for one another, as all that begun to matter was that the kids were gone, and it begun to feel as if nothing would ever bring them back.

Missing them was painful and raw for all the grandparents. But Shawn would never have taken them away as Caroline had, said his parents. How could she? How dare she?

For six months it went on – Shawn in the bottom of the bottle trying to blank it all out and try to forget he had ever had kids for it was a lot easier to do that then remember and miss them. Try as he might though, he could not. And instead, all he could do was worry for all of them every day. It went a fair way to destroying him to think how big Kayla would have grown, how much more Kimmie would have learned and how mature Roman would become in their time apart.

What if they were hurt? What if they were scared? He was their Pop. And his job was to protect them…

The memory of that brought him back from the edge. He refused to fall from it – not until he had proof hope was dead. That they were…

One day the drinking stopped – the rebuild began – and the search resumed.

For the first time in a long time, Shawn let himself once more nurture the hope he would see his children alive once again. It was hard as it required him to trust time and fate.

But he was a man with nothing else left – and they had to count for something.

So he held that hope to his heart and nurtured it.

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