Plan for today.I wrote the heading neatly, underlining it twice.
First: finish cataloguing thewar letters & memoirssection.Those volumes had been stubborn, tucked into odd corners, but I was three-quarters through and determined to finish.
Second: move torare editions.That corner of the room had been calling to me for days, with its leather spines and fragile bindings.It would be careful work, but the kind I loved most.
I leaned back, tapping my pen against the margin, pride sparking as I glanced around.For the first time, there was a hint of order here.Stacks were smaller, shelves straighter, boxes labeled in clean rows.Proof that I belonged here, that my hands were doing good work in a space the town had long ago written off as too far gone.
I pressed my lips together, steadying my breath, telling myself that was enough—that this was all I needed.That if I kept my eyes on the task, if I didn’t let my thoughts wander to the kiss I could still feel like a brand, I’d be fine.
Professional.Focused.Useful.
That was the plan.
And yet, as I closed the notebook and reached for the first box of letters, I couldn’t help glancing at the door, half-waiting for the sound of his boots, half-dreading it.
Because no matter how neatly I wrote out my lists, I knew one truth: this house didn’t just hold his books.It held him.
And I wasn’t sure how long I could pretend I was only here for the cataloguing.
The stack of battered field journals tipped against my hip as I shifted them to make space.Their covers were worn, the leather cracking, the pages stiff with age and weather.I grunted softly, nudging the pile onto the cleared table, when one hardback at the bottom slid loose.
It landed with a thud, its spine creaking.The title embossed in fading gilt readCollected Poems of 1917—though even I could tell it didn’t belong here.The thickness, the weight… it wasn’t poetry.
Curious, I opened it.
The crack of the brittle binding was followed by something worse: a thin envelope, half-molten at the edges, stuck fast to the endpaper.My breath caught.Ash smeared across my fingertips as I tried to lift it free.
On the flap, in handwriting I would have recognized anywhere, even years later: my father’s looping capitals, steady and unmistakable.
My chest squeezed tight.
I eased the letter out; the paper clinging stubbornly until it tore free.The page itself was burned along one side, a jagged line of black that swallowed words whole.But the fragments that remained were enough to make my heart stutter.
Fragment #1
Archer—
You were right about leaving before the road closes.She keeps asking questions I can’t answer.If I stay, I’ll ruin… [burn]
Tell her I— [burn]
I stared at the words until they blurred.Archer.That was Charlie.My father had written to him, mid-deployment.
And who wasshe?My mother?Someone else?
The breath rushed out of me.
Something thin and folded slipped from the crack of the book as I turned the page.Different stationery.Cream-colored, the ink elegant, slanted, unmistakably a woman’s hand.
Fragment #2
I can’t pretend anymore.He won’t forgive either of us.If we go now, we can be across state lines by dawn.Don’t look back.
—R.
The letter trembled in my hands.My stomach dropped.
R.
