A thick, official-looking envelope, forwarded from her aunt's address, arrived for Ariana. The return address was unfamiliar. Puzzled, she opened it, her eyes scanning the formal letterhead of a legal firm before falling to the handwritten note tucked inside. đź—ž
The script was shaky, a stranger's.
My dearest Ariana,
You will not remember my handwriting. For that, and for every silent year that followed, I am profoundly sorry. My grief after we lost your mother and brother was a sickness. It made me a ghost, a coward who abandoned his only living child. I believed you were better off without my shadow. I was wrong.
There are no excuses. Only a father's deepest regret, fifteen years too late. I do not ask for your forgiveness, only that you know I see my failure with painful clarity.
Please know, my daughter, that I have never stopped loving you.
Your father,
Lucas
The paper fluttered from her fingers. For fifteen years, her father had been a void, a phantom pain. Now, with a few ink-strokes, he was a man;flawed, broken, and finally reaching out. Tears she didn't know she had left welled in her eyes, not of joy, but of a long-awaited, complicated closure. 🎬