Chapter Text
I’m home alone when the letter arrives. It’s Thursday, 16 November, 1978, and it’s a harsh, cold, lousy day outside.
I know I should not open the letter, even though he gave me the permission to open his mail long ago.
I know I should not open the letter, because there is no sender listed, but I still know from whom it is.
The envelope is not closed properly, and the stamp half-heartedly – hurriedly? – stuck onto it.
Its paper smells burnt, cigarette smell telling of a letter long lying around unsent. Of fear.
I am assuming, but I know the sender, so I know it is the truth.
Be careful, I tell my fingers, as silence starts to ring in my ears – doubt, ‘shall I do this.’
A feeling, quiet, ever so quiet, but nudging me insistently, tells me ‘yes’ – ‘yes, I must.’
...
Photos fall out. I did not hold the envelope tightly enough, not wanting to wrinkle it.
Frayed edges, a few negatives... I stare at them silently.
I know the trust it must take, to send those, to entrust someone with this high a value.
My hand shakes, and my mind yells at me, ‘no!’, and I know this is theirs to keep, but the nudging in my stomach tells me to look.
... I see smiles, just hands on a few, a hat, sunlight haloes, and places I know the two of us have not seen together. I would not want to, truth be told.
‘Intrusion of privacy’ comes to mind.
I look, and I look some more. Still stuck in the envelope, hard to pull out without ripping it apart – with what kind of force was it put in here? I shudder – a letter, and I need not unfold it, for the little square excerpt facing me already tells me enough.
I knew what to expect when I saw the white, slightly dirtied up, old envelope in the mail this morning.
But I did not expect the painful force of regret and sorrow and loss – and tears, smudging many a handwritten word – of the single words my eyes catch hold of.
The letter tumbles down, joining some of the photos I had put down again after viewing them, creating a collage of a lost past. I cry.
I do not know why, but when he is home again – the tears have gone, and I just feel the emptiness left by hours of sorrow.
I put the photos and the lightly curled paper in the envelope back on the table, next to his half empty mug and the newspaper of today.
I see his eyes catching sight of the paper envelope, resting on it for the smallest of moments, and when he talks to me a while later, I know the hardness in his eyes is not directed at me.
He, too, knows who sent the letter – it was as though the weather had predicted the arrival of a pushed away memory, unwanted to face like cold rain on an unguarded, unexpecting, struggling face.
He does not touch the letter for days, and dust starts to settle on top of it. As I clean the house, I do not swipe off the thin layer coating it now. It seems like a force of nature – I know it is two, in fact.
As the days start to pass, I start to ponder.
The sender. Why did he bring it here, throw it in to the letter box?
I noticed two days ago that, whilst the envelope carried a stamp, there was no marking, it had never seen a post office, or another person’s hands.
A ghost had stopped by, and gone again, unnoticed.
He should have known I would be there to receive it – wouldn’t he? I decide that he would.
He does not like me – said that he hated me (and him), but I know it is not all true.
It is because I stole a part of his, and never gave it back.
... but he also stole a part of what declared itself to be mine, forever, and I know I will never have it. It was never mine, never like that.
But he left the letter in the letter box. Did he think I might see it?
I do not hate him, I can understand, and I believe he knows. We probably share another sentiment or two, where a memory we wish that was ours respectively instead – is missing.
I know it is that evening that he finally opened the letter – not blowing the dust off first, it’s still clinging to his fingers as the pictures fall out. They are still trembling, shaking violently – so much emotion, why did he take coffee with himself into the study on top of the letter? Oh, dearest – as he walks into the room.
I know it that moment, the pain in his eyes is spreading, ever spreading, as water waves do when you toss a small rock into a puddle. They keep expanding, solely the barriers of the puddle keeping them in – but if they could, they would expand on forever, into unseen territories, only there slowing down ... but never entirely.
The smell of burnt paper, and something else.
We both know he read the letter, saw what I saw, and felt more than I could even assume to comprehend when I held those memories in my hands for a while.
He knows he just made an irreversible mistake, and I see the low fire in his chimney through the gap in the door behind him.
And I hold him as he breaks down in my arms and starts crying silently.