Updated Nov 27, 2025 • ~9 min read
The first letter from Dominick arrived four months after his sentencing.
Poppy found it in her mailbox at the beach cottage—a plain envelope with a prison return address. Her hands trembled as she held it, debating whether to burn it unopened or read what he had to say.
Curiosity won.
She opened it carefully, half-expecting something dangerous to fall out. But it was just a letter. Handwritten on prison stationery. Dominick’s familiar script filling two pages.
Dear Poppy,
I hope this letter finds you well. I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear from, but I needed to reach out. To try to explain, one more time, what happened.
I’ve had a lot of time to think in here. About Rosa. About you. About the choices I made that led me to this cell.
I was wrong. About everything. About how I handled Rosa’s death. About pursuing you. About trying to recreate something that was gone forever.
My therapist here—they make us see therapists, part of the program—says I never processed my grief properly. That I turned Rosa into an ideal rather than accepting she was gone. And then when I met you, I saw a chance to get that ideal back.
But you were never Rosa. You were Poppy. And I should have seen that. Should have loved you for who you were instead of who you reminded me of.
I’m not asking for forgiveness. I don’t deserve that. But I wanted you to know—I’m working on myself. Doing the therapy. Taking accountability for what I did.
I hope you’re healing too. I hope you’ve found happiness, peace, everything you deserve.
I’ll always regret what I did to Rosa. And to you. If I could go back and change it all, I would.
But I can’t. So all I can do is try to be better. Even if it’s too late.
Yours,
Dominick
Poppy read it twice, looking for the manipulation. The hidden agenda. Because there was always an agenda with Dominick.
And there—in the carefully chosen words, the therapy-speak, the humble tone—she found it.
He was trying to make her feel sorry for him. Trying to rewrite history one more time, casting himself as a man who’d made mistakes rather than a murderer who’d planned and executed a killing.
“Taking accountability” while never actually saying the words “I murdered Rosa.” Just passive language about choices that “led” to consequences.
It was gaslighting from behind bars.
Poppy crumpled the letter and threw it in the trash.
But it wasn’t the last one.
Over the next three months, more letters arrived. Each one slightly different in tone, testing different approaches.
One played the victim: Prison is harder than you can imagine. I’m surrounded by real criminals. Dangerous people. I don’t belong here.
Another tried nostalgia: I think about our good times. The weekend at the lake. The night I proposed. Before everything went wrong. We were happy once, weren’t we?
A third attempted bargaining: If you could just write back. Tell me you don’t hate me. That would mean everything.
Poppy didn’t respond to any of them. Didn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing they’d affected her.
But they had.
Each letter was a reminder that Dominick was still out there, still trying to control the narrative. Still refusing to accept full responsibility for what he’d done.
“You should talk to your lawyer,” Rochelle advised when Poppy mentioned the letters during one of her visits. “See if there’s a way to make him stop.”
“I could. But honestly, they’re good reminders.”
“Reminders of what?”
“Of why I left. Of who he really is beneath the charm and the apologies.” Poppy gestured to the stack of letters she’d saved. “Every time I start second-guessing myself, wondering if I overreacted or if maybe he really has changed, I read one of these. And I remember.”
Remember that abusers don’t change. That manipulation can look like accountability if you’re not careful. That Dominick would say anything, be anyone, if he thought it would get him what he wanted.
Even from prison, he was trying.
The letters shifted in tone after Poppy went on her third date with Miles. Somehow—probably through obsessive internet searching—Dominick found out.
I saw you’re dating someone. I hope he treats you well. Better than I did.
Does he know about us? About Rosa? About everything that happened? If he doesn’t, you should tell him. Secrets destroy relationships. Trust me, I know.
I worry about you with someone new. You’re vulnerable right now. Easy to take advantage of. I know that better than anyone.
The concern was so performative, so obviously manipulative, that Poppy laughed when she read it.
Dominick was trying to sabotage her new relationship from behind bars. Trying to plant seeds of doubt about Miles, about her judgment, about whether she could trust again.
It was almost impressive in its audacity.
This time, Poppy did write back. A single sentence on plain paper.
Stop writing. I will never respond again.
She sent it and blocked his prison ID from her approved correspondence list. No more letters would get through.
But two days later, a letter arrived from a different prisoner. Someone named Aaron Alston, who Poppy had never heard of.
Inside was a note from Dominick, smuggled through another inmate.
You can’t block me out that easily. I’ll always find a way to reach you. We’re connected, Poppy. Forever. You know that.
You can date other people, change your hair, move across the country—it won’t matter. I’ll always be part of your story. The man who showed you real love, even if you can’t see it that way now.
Someday you’ll understand. Someday you’ll forgive me.
Until then, I’ll wait.
—D
That was when Poppy contacted Sabrina.
“He’s violating the restraining order,” the lawyer said immediately. “Using other inmates to bypass correspondence restrictions. That’s prosecutable.”
“I don’t want to prosecute. I just want him to stop.”
“Then we file a formal complaint with the prison. Get him in administrative segregation if necessary. They take this seriously—harassment of victims undermines rehabilitation programs.”
Within a week, the warden had been contacted. Dominick was moved to restricted housing. No more smuggled letters. No more attempts to reach her.
Finally, silence.
Poppy waited for relief. For the absence of his words to feel like freedom.
Instead, she felt angry.
Angry that even from prison, even after being convicted and sentenced, Dominick thought he had the right to her attention. Her forgiveness. Her emotional energy.
Angry that he’d reframed murder as a “mistake,” abuse as “complicated love,” manipulation as “connection.”
Angry that she had to keep fighting him off, keep establishing boundaries, keep proving that no meant no.
“He doesn’t get to do this,” Poppy told her therapist during their next session. “He doesn’t get to haunt me forever.”
“Then don’t let him.”
“How? He’s literally in my head. His voice. His justifications. Every time I start to move on, I hear him explaining why I’m wrong.”
“That’s normal after abuse. The internal critic often sounds like our abuser long after they’re gone.” Her therapist leaned forward. “But you have a choice. You can let that voice control you, or you can challenge it. Replace it with your own truth.”
So Poppy started writing again. Not the book—she’d finished the first draft weeks ago. But a journal. Private. Just for her.
Every time she heard Dominick’s voice in her head, she wrote it down. Then wrote the counter-argument.
Dominick’s voice: You’ll never find anyone who loved you like I did.
My truth: Because no one else will murder someone and try to recreate them. That’s not love. That’s obsession.
Dominick’s voice: You’re being dramatic. Therapy is making you see abuse where there was just normal relationship friction.
My truth: You murdered your previous girlfriend. Nothing about our relationship was normal.
Dominick’s voice: Miles will leave you when he sees the real you. The broken, damaged version.
My truth: I’m not broken. I’m healing. And if Miles can’t handle that, he’s not the right person for me.
Slowly, page by page, Poppy reclaimed her internal narrative.
Dominick’s letters stopped. But more importantly, his voice in her head grew quieter.
Replaced by her own voice. Stronger now. Clearer.
A voice that said: You survived. You’re free. And you don’t owe him anything—not forgiveness, not understanding, not one more second of your time.
The last letter she ever received from him arrived six months after the first one. Forwarded by the prison with a note that it had been sent before the correspondence ban.
Poppy almost threw it away unopened.
But something made her read it. One final time.
Poppy,
I understand now that you won’t write back. That’s okay. I don’t deserve your words.
But I need you to know something. Need you to hear this, even if you never respond.
I loved Rosa. And I loved you. Not the way I should have. Not healthily. But it was real to me.
The problem was I never learned to love without possessing. To care without controlling. To let go without destroying.
Rosa tried to teach me. You tried to show me. But I was too broken to learn.
So I ruined everything. Took two beautiful women and turned them into ghosts.
One literally. One figuratively.
I’ll die in here carrying that guilt. And maybe that’s justice. Maybe that’s what I deserve.
I hope you find happiness. Real happiness, not the twisted version I offered.
I hope you forget me.
Goodbye, Poppy.
—Dominick
She read it once. Felt nothing.
No sympathy. No forgiveness. No residual love.
Just… nothing.
And that, Poppy realized, was freedom.
She burned the letter in the fireplace, watching his words turn to ash.
Then she picked up her phone and texted Miles.
Poppy: Still on for dinner tomorrow?
Miles: Absolutely. Looking forward to it.
Poppy: Me too.
And she meant it.
Dominick was ash and memory. A closed chapter.
Poppy was the future.
And it was time to start living it.
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