Chapter 23 - ANNA’S DRAFT EMAIL
When Leo was twenty-eight, North Coast closed an old estate archive.
They found Anna’s unfinished email to me in a backup.
More recoverable text than we originally had.
Jackson,
I need to tell you something about Chad and the trust before I’m too sick to manage it.
I let him handle more because I was tired.
Daniel warned me Chad always turns help into authority.
I thought Daniel was being harsh.
Then:
Chad asked me to sign a caregiver-business approval. I refused.
He said if I died before Jackson came home, he would need money to raise Leo properly.
I told him North Coast decides that.
Then:
I am afraid I made a mistake letting him believe he is next.
The email stopped.
Leo read it.
He cried.
Not because Anna failed.
Because she knew.
Too late.
“Did Mom want me with you?”
“I think she was reconsidering Chad.”
“Why didn’t she send it?”
“I don’t know.”
We did not invent a final wish.
Dead people deserve limits too.
Anna had loved Chad.
Trusted him.
Then feared the control she had handed him.
All could be true.
Leo placed the email beside Daniel’s recording.
Two parents.
Incomplete plans.
No perfect prophecy.
He said:
“They were just people.”
May you like
“Yes.”
That was adulthood.
