Daniel.
I answered.
“Did you find it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Are you all right?”
I looked at the letter on the table.
My twenty-year-old handwriting.
The harder pressure at the bottom of the third page.
“I wrote to him,” I said.
“After I left.
I told him I thought about him every day.
I told him to write back.” My voice was steady but only just.
“He never did.
And he kept the letter for fifty-four years.”
Daniel was quiet.
“He was afraid,” I said.
“That’s what his letter said.
He was afraid.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid too,” I said.
“I just — I wrote the letter anyway.”
“I know,” Daniel said.
“I think that’s what he admired most about you.
He said something like that once, when I was young.
He said the bravest thing a person can do is say something true when they don’t know how it will land.” A pause.
“I didn’t know who he was talking about.
I do now.”
I pressed my hand flat against the letter on the table.
“Daniel,” I said.
“The house on Maple Street.”
“Yes?”
