I slept badly that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Danny sitting by the window with the blanket across his knees.
I heard him say my old nickname.
I remembered his hands on the ring he'd given me, the little diamond barely catching the light.
I remembered his apology.
None of those memories canceled the others.
In the morning, I made coffee and forgot to put the filter in properly. Grounds spilled into the pot, and I poured the first cup down the sink.
Ted would have laughed at me.
I stood there with the coffee dripping into the basin and missed him so much that I had to sit down.
I had loved Ted for thirty years. I had loved him in ways that had nothing to do with the boy who once asked me to dance.
There was no competition between those loves.
They belonged to different parts of my life.
I finished making the coffee, then took the Whitman's box to the kitchen table.
I opened the lid.
The letters were tied with a faded ribbon. I had retied it several times over the years, always trying to keep the pages from slipping apart.
I loosened the knot.
The first letter had a crease across the middle. Danny had folded it before putting it in the envelope, and the fold had never quite flattened.
I read the first few lines.
Then I read the rest.
His handwriting was young and hurried. Some words leaned into each other. The capital D tilted forward, just as it had on the card that came with the flowers.
I moved through the letters slowly.
There were complaints about food, jokes about men who snored, descriptions of places he had seen, and questions about what I was doing back in Reno.
There were promises.
There were plans.
There were sentences that made me smile before I could stop myself.
There were others that hurt.
I didn't read all thirty-one in one sitting. By noon, my eyes were tired, and the muscles between my shoulders ached.
I put the ribbon back around the letters and closed the box.
Then I called my daughter.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Mom? Are you all right?”
“I'm fine.”
“Did you go to see him?”
“Yes.”
She was quiet.
“And?”
I looked at the box on the table.
“He's alive.”
“I know. You told me that yesterday.”
“No. I mean, I saw him. I sat in his house. I spoke to him.”
“Oh, Mom.”
Her voice softened.
I told her about the green house, Selena, the clock, and the flowers. I told her that Danny had been hurt overseas, that his mother had lied, and that he'd spent years believing I had moved on without wanting to hear from him.
I didn't try to make the story neat.
When I finished, my daughter sighed.
“I wish you hadn't had to go through that.”
“So do I.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
I looked toward the window.
“I don't know yet.”
“You don't owe him anything.”
“I know.”
“And you don't have to forgive him.”
“I know that too.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Do you feel better?”
I thought about it.
“Not better exactly. But I feel different.”
“That makes sense.”
We talked about the grandchildren for a while. One had a school project, another had called to ask about a recipe, and the youngest had decided that all vegetables were a personal insult.
I listened to her tell me these things, and I felt grateful for the ordinary life that had continued while the past sat in its box.
After we hung up, I washed my coffee cup.
Then I went to the drawer where I kept paper and envelopes.
I took out a sheet of stationery and sat at the table.
I didn't know whether Danny could read a long letter. I didn't know whether I wanted to write one. But I knew I didn't want the next thing between us to be another silence neither of us understood.
I wrote his name.
Then I stopped.
I thought of all the things I could tell him, all the questions I still had, and all the explanations I no longer needed.
I didn't want to write a letter that asked him to make the past different.
I wanted to tell him what was true now.
So I began again.
I told him that I had reached home safely. I told him I had opened the box and read some of the letters. I told him that I was glad he had sent the flowers, even though I wished he'd found a braver way to do it.
I told him I wasn't promising anything beyond another conversation.
I told him that Ted had been a good husband and that I would always be grateful for the life we'd shared.
Then I wrote one more thing.
I said I hoped Danny would stop punishing himself long enough to enjoy whatever time remained to him.
I signed my name, Susan.
Not Sukey.
Not Dandylion.
Susan.
I put the letter in an envelope and wrote the address Selena had given me on the back of a scrap of paper.
I didn't mail it that day.
I left it beside the box and went outside to tend the yard.
The lemon tree needed pruning. I cut away a dead branch and gathered the brittle pieces into a small pile.
The tree had never produced a lemon, no matter how much I watered it or how carefully I watched the blossoms. For years, Ted had teased me that I was the only person he knew who could grow a tree that refused to give fruit.
I had threatened to pull it out more than once.
He always asked me to give it another season.
After he died, I kept giving it another season.
I stood beneath its branches and looked up at the leaves.
Some things survived without becoming what we'd hoped they would be.
That didn't mean they were worthless.
On Monday, I mailed the letter.
I didn't tell myself that it was the start of something grand. I didn't imagine that Danny and I would recover the years we had lost or become the people we had once planned to be.
I simply sent it.
Three days later, Selena called.
“Dad got your letter,” she said.
“Did he read it?”
“Twice.”
I smiled.
“Did he say anything?”
“He said you still write like you talk.”
“That doesn't sound like a compliment.”
“It was, coming from him.”
I heard a small movement at her end of the line, then Danny's voice in the background.
“Ask her if she'll come again.”
Selena covered the phone, but not enough to keep me from hearing.
“Dad, you can ask her yourself.”
There was a pause.
Then Danny spoke directly into the receiver.
“Would you come and see me again, Dandylion?”
I looked at the letter I'd kept beside the Whitman's box.
I thought of the drive north, the small green house, and the old man who had finally told me the truth.
“Yes,” I said. “I can come again.”
I did not say when.
I did not promise how often.
I wanted to leave room for my own life, for the people who were still here, and for the grief I carried for Ted.
Danny seemed to understand.
“Thank you,” he said.
We talked for a few minutes. He asked whether I'd read more of the letters, and I told him I had.
He asked which one I liked best.
“I haven't decided.”
“You always did take your time.”
“Someone had to.”
He laughed, and the sound was faint but familiar.
When we hung up, I put the phone down and went to the cedar chest.
I returned the letters to their place, but I kept the first one on the kitchen table.
I wanted to read it again later.
Not because I was waiting for Danny to come back.
He had come back, in a way, though not as the young man who had boarded a bus in October 1968.
And I had come back too, not to the girl in the yellow dress, but to the woman who had carried her memory for nearly six decades.
I had a husband I had loved, children I had raised, grandchildren who needed me, and a house with a lemon tree that still refused to give me fruit.
I had a past that hurt.
I had a truth that came too late.
And I had one more conversation ahead of me, if we were both fortunate enough to have it.
That was all I could promise.
For now, it was enough.
I folded the first letter along its old crease and placed it back in the box.
Then I tied the ribbon, not too tightly this time.
I closed the lid and carried it to the cedar chest.
The letters had been mine to keep all those years.
What I chose to do with them now was mine too.
The End
Read more original stories on Feel Every Story.
I Kept Thirty-One Letters From the Boy I Thought I Had Lost, Even After I Built a Whole Life With Another Man
Part 12 of 12
