My voice was very calm.
I was not calm.
Daniel stood when I stood.
“Eleanor.”
I looked at him.
“He loved you,” Daniel said.
“The whole time.
He was just — he was afraid.” A beat.
“He was human.”
I nodded.
I couldn’t speak.
I was already thinking about the box.
I drove home too fast and didn’t notice.
The box was on the kitchen table where I’d left it.
I’d moved the keys to the counter.
The two envelopes — Thomas’s letter, the second envelope with Daniel’s name — were stacked beside it.
I had thought the box was empty after that.
I lifted the keys.
Beneath them, pressed flat against the bottom, was a small brown envelope.
Thin.
Old.
The paper had gone soft with age.
My handwriting was on the front.
Not Thomas’s.
Mine.
My own handwriting from fifty-four years ago, when I was twenty years old and homesick and too proud to say so plainly.
I sat down at the kitchen table and held it for a long time without opening it.
I knew what was inside.
I had written it.
But knowing and facing are different things, and I sat there for several minutes doing neither.
Then I opened it.
