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Dear Michaela,
I hope this letter finds you well - or at the very least better than I have been. It has been a month now since John passed. Less than a month also since you had left me. You cannot begin to imagine all the papers that had been fed to the flames as I tried in vain to put my thoughts to page. In truth, I do not even know if these words will prove sufficient. But words are all I have now.
I confess I have been angry for a while now. They do say it is the second stage of grief, and yet somehow I do not think I have ever experienced the first, the thing they call denial. No, there was too much certainty to what had happened, too many tears shed, John’s cold, cold hands in mine. The dreaded pit in my stomach. This empty womb. Worst of all, the peaceful smile on his face, as if he had everything he could possibly want, not knowing the wreckage he would leave behind. I confess that a part of me hated him for it, though he does not deserve it. Not in this lifetime nor the next.
Do not take these confessions of mine, as intimate as they may seem, as forgiveness. You left, rode off in the middle of the night without a word of warning or even a goodbye. I had thought we were friends. I had thought we would have a lifetime together. You promised you would be here by my side. Perhaps I was a fool to trust you so.
I understand there may be nothing I can do to bring you back here. And while I do not forgive you, I do not begrudge you for it. I understand how much John meant to you, and a part of me knows I cannot compare. What is one year compared to the two decades you had together?
Regardless, I am here should you need me.
Your steadfast friend
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela,
It had been five months now since John’s death. The wound is still fresh in my mind, in my heart and strangely so, also in the flesh. Though I can say his name now without wanting to weep until these lungs of mine ache. Do you feel the same as well? I wish you were here. I know you will understand, perhaps even in ways I cannot yet comprehend. It seems this anger of mine has turned into a strange sort of longing.
I suppose in many ways, not much has changed here. I wake up, I see to the estate, I eat, I sleep. In other ways, so much has changed. The house is so empty, still in mourning, black veils over everything, shrouding the vibrancy of what had once been. The fire no longer crackles like the night it did when you and John would stay up laughing at some ungodly hour. Do you remember how I would chastise you both? Do you still think ill of me for it? Is that why you left?
I suppose I should not blame you for it. After all, I myself do not wish to be here. Yet I cannot help but wonder whether there is anything I could have done, could still do to bring you back?
Your friend
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela
Nine months have passed, and it is so quiet here. Once there was a time I had longed for solitude, for the peace and quiet under the moonlight sky as the rest of the world spun on and on in all its squalor. But now the silence is heavy, suffocating even. It is as if I cannot move on. A part of me does not wish to, but I know I must. I cannot claim to ascertain your thoughts on the matter, but I know John would want me to carry on.
I often think back to our time in Scotland these days. It had felt suffocating then for many other reasons. But every day I find it preferable to the heavy silence of now. And I admit with much reluctance that much of it had to do with my dislike for your presence then. What I wouldn’t do now to have you by my side, to walk through the morning mist, and see the impossible green of the highlands before me.
You may have heard by now, but Sophie and Benedict are married and are already expecting. There had been a time when I had hoped John had left behind a part of him — a hope that had manifested in delusion and embarrassment. In another world, another time, I too would have had a babe in my arms, and the halls of this home would not feel so empty.
Your friend,
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela
The winter is coming to pass now. The world is halfway through thawing. There is still frost on the window-sills, and the nights do not pass by with a biting chill. I think more than I do anything else these days. A surprise to no one else but me. Do you ever think if one thing had been different, everything would be different today? If I had gotten John to a physician sooner, taken his complaints of a headache more seriously? Or perhaps I should have been kinder to you from the very start, treating you like the friend you became and no longer are. Would he have survived? Would you have stayed?
It is a terrible cycle, I fear, the constant questioning, bargaining with the ghosts of the past and present, before I eventually find myself listless. But such is the lot I have in life. John is gone. You are gone. Gone to places I cannot follow. And what must I do now? Live on, perhaps. That seems the most rational thing to do.
While I have resumed the pianoforte, I do not touch my puzzle collection these days. They all remain perfectly numbered, precisely where they should be. Every time I venture towards those shelves, I go back to the evening with you and John completing puzzles together. You were the sky above, and he my earth and bearings, yet you were both something much bigger than that.
Your friend
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela
The spring has finally come, and the flowers are in full bloom. There is a beauty here I had not thought possible in a long time. It is times like these that I often wonder why I write to you. It is not as if you read these letters, for they remain perched on the study undelivered. I do not yet have the courage to send them. And besides, you are as far away as John is, further still because it seems you had left me of your own accord and have not provided anyone with an address.
I sleep lightly these days, I fear tragedy may strike every hour in slumber. I rarely dream, but last night, for the first time, I did. I dreamt of you. There was nothing peculiar about the dream. Nothing really distinguishes it to make it particularly memorable. Nothing except you. I remember your dress, the deep maroon you favour, your smile so bright you would think the sun were still there even under a night sky. Has anyone told you of the vibrancy of your eyes? If you ever do come back, I shall take up that responsibility.
They say when you dream of someone, they are thinking of you too. So are you? Are you thinking of me? I think of you always. I should not be. Not when I should be thinking of John. What kind of person thinks of someone else now? Now, when they should be mourning and yet I think of your warmth your laughter.
Where are you, Michaela? Will you not send word? They do say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps it is not a fondness I feel but a sharpness. A clarity unearthed by the distance between us. I miss John certainly, but I miss you too. I grieve you, differently perhaps, but I grieve you all the same.
Your distant friend
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela
Sophie has given birth to a little girl. They have christened her Violet. She is a sweet thing, with beautiful brown eyes like her mother, a smile like Benedict’s. I am happy for them, truly I am. But there is an uglier part of me that wishes
I just wish
Everything was easier when you were here. Perhaps this is me romanticising the past, putting a veneer of light across it, seeing it through a rose-tainted window. But I do not misremember. Even when I thought I had hated you, I knew in many ways you were always meant to mean something different to me. I wished to seek you out and repel you all the same. I saw you spirited, and in many ways, I resented it. I wanted to put you in a gilded cage, for my amusement, my own personal study, my own desires. Whatever this is did not begin with his absence, but rather the day I first saw and could not remember my own name.
In many ways, I am glad you will never read these letters. You’ve always had the uncanny skill to see right through me, and you would see my pathetic begging for what it truly is. I do not want that.
Yours in pity
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela
I hear whispers of your whereabouts now, it is, I admit, rather strange that I had to hear its from the lips of others and not by your own hand. Am I truly so despicable to you? Do you truly hate me so? I tell myself it is no matter. But it matters so much to me.
They say you are in India. A corner of the earth so far away I could not reach you if I had tried. I am not like my brothers, society has made that all too clear to me. No matter. Tell me, have you seen the fields of Punjab? Heard the music of Karnataka? Climbed the Himlayans?
I can imagine you in India so clearly, and in my mind's eye it suits you so very well. The azure skies, the mosaic palaces gleaming under the sun. You would don bright colours, vermillions, rich purple, deep burgundies. You would meet new people, whether in the bustling markets and docksides or the in the palace of some petty Raja. You would make friends or fall in love. You are free in ways I cannot be. You are not wasting time stuck here like I am. You have everything you have ever wanted.
You live without me. I have no right to feel this. No true claim to your heart, and yet I cannot help but feel possessive. Jealous. Unmoored.
Your friend in eternal boredom
Francesca
~~~
Dear Michaela
Last night I did the most daring thing. I decided to take out the puzzle, you know, the very same one we had done with John. I said once that you were sky and he was my earth. But the truth is I look toward the sky more often than I would like to admit.
The truth is, I cannot stop thinking of you. I think I
[the letter is abandoned entirely]
~~~
Dear Michaela
I love you.
There I have said, and perhaps in saying it, it might haunt me less. Perhaps in speaking these words, committing them to paper, I can finally unearth this feeling, purge it entirely from the soul. It can be immortalised elsewhere, just not in me. I will think of it the same way one thinks of grief. A necessity perhaps but one to be celebrated for a moment before it is burned to the stake.
I never understood it, the wild, unbridled thing my siblings all spoke of. The unmooring and the burning devastation that comes right after the exuberance of its flight, but now I think I might know. I loved John certainly, do not misunderstand him, I loved him as one loves the moon, and I love him in stillness and silence, in admiration and adoration. But you, Michaela, I love you like the sun. Brightly, fiercely, eclipsing all else. It is different, yes, but it is love all the same.
But I hope now that it has been expressed, this love will wither away; may it never come to me twice over. Godspeed Michaela. I shall dance away all my love and my grief. I hope I shall never see you again, for I fear if even the ghost of your smile flashes past the corner of my eye, I can never go on as I used to.
Yours (just this once)
Francesca
~~~
[These letters remain sealed and unsent for two years.]