Page 34 of Never After Us
I sit cross-legged on the bed with the shoebox in my lap.
My fingers tremble a little as I loosen the knot.The twine snaps easily, and the letters shift, like they’re stretching after a lifetime of being held in place.
I pick up the first envelope, holding it as gently as if it has a pulse.The paper is thin, softened by time, almost translucent along the folds.The handwriting leans and loops in an eager, youthful way—full of hope I don’t think I’ve held in years.
I inhale.
And I start reading.
August 14,1967
My dearest Thomas,
You left yesterday,and everything feels wrong.
The house is too quiet.The road is too still.I keep listening for your truck, hoping I’ll hear the gravel shift or that ridiculous whistling you do when you’re nervous someone will catch us together.I never told you how terrible it sounds, mostly because it made me feel like I was yours in a way nothing else ever has.
Laura says I’m being dramatic.She doesn’t understand what it means to feel so much at once—how pride can sit right next to fear, how love can grow even when your heart feels like it’s too full to hold another ounce.You told me not to be scared, but I am.You’re eighteen, and they’re sending you so far from home it hurts to think about it.
Do you promise you’ll write?You say yes too easily when you’re trying to reassure me.Say it again on paper.Let me keep the promise in my hands when I miss you.I know I will.I already do.
I prayed last night.And again this morning.And again just now before I sat down to write this.I don’t know if it does anything at all, but I don’t know what else to do except ask the universe to bring you back to me.
Please come home safe.
I’m not finished loving you yet.
Yours, always,
Lina
I blink hard.
Thomas?
Who the hell is Thomas?
My eyes skim the letter again, as if the name might rearrange itself into something familiar, something that belonged to the Lina I knew.But it doesn’t.It stays right there, bold and young and full of a love story I’ve never heard.
Why have I never heard his name?
Why did she keep letters from 1967 hidden away in a shoebox?
Why didn’t she tell anyone?
My chest goes tight—not the painful way, but the way it does when a truth brushes up against you, and you’re not ready for it.This ...this feels like stepping into a version of her life I didn’t even know existed.A life she sealed away on purpose.A life she protected from everyone, including me.
I sit there, staring at the paper, the ink faded but still breathing with her.Younger her.Hopeful her.The her I probably never met.
A part of me wants to fold the letter back up, tie the twine tight again, and pretend I didn’t see any of this.Pretend her past isn’t sitting in my lap, demanding to be acknowledged.
I should call Mom, Aunt Lisa ...or Ari.Anyone who can talk me down before I fall too deep into someone else’s history.
Because these letters—they don’t look like a key.They’re more like a door.
A door she meant for someone to open.
A door I’m suddenly terrified to walk through.
