Chapter 12
Diary of a Dead Man
My dearest Famke,
There isn’t a day which goes by I don’t think of you. The time we spent together were the happiest days of my life. Watching our daughter grow within you was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had. I only wish I had told you how much I loved you when I had the opportunity. Your selfless heart and kind soul was a true testament to the beauty you possess inside and out. Every day I watch our daughter and wish you could see how amazing she is.
She is four now. There is you in her. I see it every day. She has a habit of pulling her lower lip, right in the center, between her teeth. You used to do this when you were thinking hard. She also has your dimple on her right cheek.
I know taking her from you caused you pain. Forcing Mindy to raise a child which was not hers will remain my greatest regret in life. Despite how much she wanted a child, she wanted one of her own. Do not fret, my love. She is a good mother. She is kind to our daughter, and she does the best she can.
I have learned to read Mindy’s moods better and when she is on the verge of one of her episodes, I plan father-daughter activities or take our child to visit family. I cannot help, even four years later, to resent how she stole the last three weeks of our time together in the way she did. What should have been a
celebration of the new life we created was soured by her illness.
I want you to know, my life is filled with regret for not being a braver man. I should have held you close. I should have told you the truth. I should have never left. I should have been honest with you, with Mindy, with myself. I should have told you how I felt, and I shouldn’t have let anyone come between us.
I hope someday I am brave enough to come to you. I did come to your gas station once. I watched you in the window. You didn’t know I was there, but I had found out where you were working and my intention was to speak to you, to reveal how I felt and to tell you, I knew you loved me too. I was and am, very much a coward. I paid my gas at the pump and drove away. I bitterly regret it.
Someday, I will come to you, and we will chat, and I will express in person all the things I have been unable to verbalize in the past. For now, I will send you my love and pray you have not forgotten us.
Love always and forever,
Prince.
Famke read it through five times before she comprehended the letter in its entirety. No freaking wonder Royal had thought they’d had an affair. What was this all about? Not once in the entire ten months they had spent together had he even come close to confessing feelings like the ones in this letter. She noted the date on the letter was about three months before he’d died. Good grief! Even after all the time apart he was writing like this?
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Chapter 12
She was torn between reading the handwritten letters in the pile and ducking her head under the pillow to
avoid the contents.
In the end curiosity moved her and she took a breath and began reading through them. At the end of the
stack, she was admittedly emotional and confused.
