Each letter had been kept in a separate envelope.
On several of them, Claire could see the faint markings of returned mail.
She touched the screen as though the images might disappear if she did not hold them in place.
“Why does he have these?”
Eleanor leaned toward the laptop.
Her expression changed as she recognized the handwriting.
“Those are yours.”
“I know.”
“No,” Eleanor whispered. “I never received them.”
Claire stared at her.
“What?”
“I never received these letters.”
The room seemed to tilt around them.
Claire remembered mailing those envelopes. She remembered checking the address, buying the stamps, and walking to the mailbox with the strange mixture of hope and dread that had accompanied every attempt to repair their relationship.
“I sent them to this house.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“Daniel told me you had written once, years ago, asking me not to contact you anymore. He said you had made it clear that you wanted a clean break.”
Claire felt her stomach twist.
“He told me you said you were tired of rescuing me. He said you didn’t want me to come home.”
For several seconds, the two women looked at each other without speaking.
Then Eleanor began to cry.
Not loudly. Not with the dramatic force of someone who had finally found the right words. Tears simply slipped down her face, and she made a small, wounded sound that seemed to come from somewhere far deeper than her throat.
“I thought you had stopped loving me,” she said.
Claire pulled her chair closer.
“I thought you had stopped loving me.”
They held each other across the table, surrounded by the evidence of twelve years of unnecessary silence.
The letters had not been lost. The love had not disappeared. Someone had placed himself between them and made their longing look like rejection.
Outside, the back door opened.
Daniel stepped into the house, still talking on his phone.
“Listen, I’ll call you back,” he said. “Something has come up.”
