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The first one Frank sends almost by accident.
He's been on the road. Driving if only to keep one horizon ahead of him, and the other in his rearview mirror. He stops for gas, and for coffee. Some nights he doesn't even bother with a motel to sleep off the long day's drive; the air is cold but not always unbearably so, for December, and from the cargo bed of his pickup, he has full view of the stars.
He'd almost forgotten what they looked like, having lived in the city so long.
He's sitting at a roadside diner, making his way through some bacon and eggs when something catches his eye on the counter. It's a spinning display of holiday postcards, most of them nothing to write home about. But Frank finds himself picking up a card of the northern constellations, the ones expected to show around Christmas – which, again, not likely from the city.
He's scrawled out Karen's address on the back before he's even aware of asking the waitress for a pen.
He doesn't write a note. Doesn't even sign his name, including the one the government gave him.
Somehow, he thinks she'll understand.
…
After that, it becomes something of a habit.
He starts with short messages – a simple Hey from the Smokies, it's me, and an equally brief Hope you're well while he's hiking through the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The first few words are the hardest, but once he's gotten them down it's like a dam has been broken. Then it becomes almost terrifyingly easy, like it would defy some law of physics not to keep going. To stay connected to her in these small ways.
Think you would like this, he writes when he finds himself driving past Edith Wharton's estate up along Massachusetts' west border. He's not familiar with her work, but he's seen some of her novels on Karen's shelf before.
He keeps driving for a while, not ready to turn back just yet. Herman Melville's place is not much farther north. Overrated, Frank writes on the back of that postcard.
Even when he returns to the city, he can't seem to stop.
Instead of postcards, now, it's letters. Short ones, still, for the most part. Telling her about a new coffee shop he found, one that hasn't been overrun by the hipsters. When he gets a job as a foreman, he writes her about that too.
He never signs his name. But he does start leaving a return address. The place he's just moved to is a walk-up in Brooklyn, in a quiet little neighborhood with a dog park down the street. He takes the paper there in the mornings, finds himself scanning the local crime pages. The headlines start running together after a while, but they're not the real reason he's looking.
He leaves that part out when he writes her.
Two weeks after he's moved, tucked between ads and an internet bill, there's a letter.
He pulls it free, the inside of his chest going tight. Karen's name is written there, in his handwriting. A bright red RETURN TO SENDER has been stamped into the corner of the envelope.
He has no way of knowing when she moved, or how long she hasn't been getting his letters. His postcards, even. If she's received any of them at all. Most of them didn't have an address to bounce back to, a place where he's finally stood still, until now.
…
They keep coming back to him, one after another.
He thinks about calling her, but it's vastly more daunting than sending that first handful of postcards had been. He thinks of everything he's written her – all the things he's said without saying – and the prospect of trying to voice them aloud in a phone call is enough to have him hanging up before he's finished dialing her number.
The letters pile up on his counter, wrinkled through and creased at the corners, their seals all worn apart. Frank doesn't want to imagine how carelessly they must have been handled. Worse – he doesn't want to imagine anyone else reading these words he'd written for Karen, discarding them where they might've meant something to her.
But he does, and it eats at him, making that ache in chest crack wider each time another letter gets returned.
If he's doing this, then he's doing this right. Karen deserves to hear everything he has to say face-to-face. She deserves the chance to close her door on him, too, if that's what she decides she wants.
And Frank – what Frank wants is—
…
He's waiting to hear back from Lieberman when he gets the last letter he'd sent her.
He tries to remember what he'd written. He'd been at the coffee place that day, reading The Age of Innocence. The barista had made some remark about how he fit right in, the black coffee and flannel, the beard and the unusual choice in books. Frank had taken none of this lightly, and expressed as much in his letter, stopping short of what he really wanted to say to her – You should be here. With me.
I—
He picks up the envelope. This seal's broken too, but he's come to expect that. This one looks particularly weathered, like it's been through hell and back. Not exactly a stretch, considering where her old neighborhood had been. Frank checks his phone again, in case Lieberman's called with an update. He hasn't. Frank thumbs open the letter, sliding it free.
A single white rose petal falls out.
Frank stares at it for a long moment. Feels its softness, the delicacy of its contours that haven't been fully pressed out by the letter. It's still fresh, not quite browned at the edges. Fragrant. Almost dewy to the touch. It can't have been sent back to him more than a couple days ago.
And it can't have been anyone other than Karen.
He piles everything together, touching each one with a new kind of wonder. All those letters, all the words that he wrote her – she'd read them. More than that, she'd read in between them. Into the space where he's trying to settle, into the life that he's slowly finding a way to rebuild.
And now, he thinks, she's asking him to finally, finally, make them mean something real.
Frank's bundling the letters into his jacket when he gets the call from Lieberman. He lets it go to voicemail.
He knows where he's going, now.
…
Her place is exactly as he'd remembered it.
Even the doorman's the same. Frank pulls back his hood and lifts a brown paper bag as he passes. The doorman waves him through, hardly glancing up from his computer.
Karen's still in her work clothes when she opens the door. Another black skirt, a soft cream-colored blouse. She's wearing black tights this time, a concession to the colder weather. She's already toed off her heels, but then, Frank's oddly used to seeing her barefoot by now.
"Frank." She looks at him, and there's a soft kind of knowing in the way she leans into the doorframe. "I take it you got my message."
"Took me longer than it should've," Frank admits. He sways forward a step. "You've been getting my letters."
"Yes," she says simply. "And I'd like them back now, please, if you have them."
He pulls the stack of them out of his jacket. "What'd you do, bribe your mailman or something?"
"Not exactly." There's a twinkling kind of light in her eyes. Frank feels like he's in the back of his pickup again, looking at the stars. "I helped him out once. He owed me a favor."
She takes the letters, tucking them against her arm. Holding them closer than Frank feels he deserves, but he's not about to ask her to stop. Not now. Not ever. Not anymore.
"I can tell you about it sometime," she says. "If you want."
"Yeah?" Frank raises the bag in his hand, beer bottles clinking. This part feels familiar, too, and yet so very, terrifyingly new. Like both nothing and everything's changed, all at once. "Is, uh. Is now good for you?"
Karen bites her lip, the corner of it lifting up in a smile. "I'd say it's about time, Frank," she says, and nudges her hip into the door, letting him inside.