Absolutely. Here's Chapter 8: Letters Never Sent, a quieter, introspective chapter where Bonitah faces memories she has buried and tries to find closure through the words she never had the chance to say aloud—especially to Benaiah's absent father.
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Chapter 8: Letters Never Sent
The idea came to her one afternoon when the wind was too sharp to sit outside.
Benaiah was asleep, cheeks flushed from play, breathing softly in his blanket cocoon. The kettle hissed over the stove, and Lindiwe was humming a soft hymn in the background.
Bonitah sat at the small table, a scrap of paper in front of her, and stared at it.
She wasn't sure why she started writing. She didn't even have an envelope. But something inside her wanted to be said. Not to be heard necessarily—just spoken.
To Love, she wrote at the top.
She paused, then crossed it out.
To the man who walked away, she tried again.
Still, it didn't feel right.
Finally, she left it blank and just wrote.
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I don't know if you ever think about me. About him. About what you left behind. Maybe you've moved on. Maybe you don't even remember my face. But I remember yours.
I remember how you held my hand and told me you'd stand by me. I remember the warmth of your promises. The softness in your voice when you first touched my belly.
And I remember the silence after you disappeared.
You never saw him. Your son. You never saw how he looked at me that first day. You never saw how he smiled, how he clenched his fists when he slept. You missed his first laugh. His first fever. His first everything.
Maybe you think you saved yourself by walking away. Maybe you didn't know what to do. Maybe you were scared.
I was scared too. But I stayed.
I stayed when I was hungry. I stayed when we had no roof. I stayed when the world looked away. I stayed for him.
He carries your eyes. But he carries my strength.
He doesn't need you. But someday, I might tell him about you. Not out of bitterness—but truth. So he knows where he came from. And so he knows what it means to rise from abandonment and become whole.
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Bonitah folded the paper slowly. She didn't cry.
She didn't feel anger.
Just a quiet release.
She placed the letter in the old suitcase under her mattress—the one that carried her only photos, clinic papers, and memories she wasn't yet ready to let go of.
She started writing more after that. Letters she never planned to send. Some to her mother back home. Others to the baby she once feared she couldn't raise. Even one to herself, titled:
"To the girl who didn't give up."
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In the stillness of those writings, something began to shift in her.
Bonitah realized that she didn't need apologies to heal. She didn't need Love to come back. She didn't even need anyone to understand.
She just needed to speak. And to keep walking forward.
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That week, she began attending evening literacy classes offered by the community center. The women's group encouraged her. Lindiwe offered to watch Benaiah on the nights she couldn't take him.
At first, she was nervous. Embarrassed by her shaky reading and unsure writing. But slowly, her confidence grew.
Each word she learned felt like reclaiming a part of herself that life had tried to bury.
Words became her armor. Her therapy. Her freedom.
And late at night, when Benaiah was asleep and the world was quiet, she'd pull out her notebook and write:
"Today, I stood taller than my fear."
"I am still rebuilding."
"Benaiah smiled at me today. And I remembered that I am enough."
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