He lifts a shoulder without lifting his gaze. “They’re yours.”
The tape gives with that small, obscene sound that makes me think of unpacking at new addresses, of kitchens that don’t yet know your footsteps. The cardboard flaps open. Inside, the letters are arranged in messy arrangement of years—different envelopes, different pens, some thin, some fat, some stamped and never sent, some never even addressed because he knew he wouldn’t mail them and did it anyway.
I don’t touch at first. Just look. My throat tightens with the pressure of a decade.
“Savannah,” he says, and I hear the fear he’s trying to swallow. “If you want me to?—”
“No.” My hand goes in. Paper whispers against paper. I pull the top envelope free. My name is printed in the neat block letters he learned to hide his lefty slant.Savannah Brooks.
The seal is unglued, old adhesive gone to dust. I slide the page out and unfold it.
October 12
I didn’t sleep. The framing crew hammered all morning and I kept thinking it sounded like a heartbeat outside the house. I went to the river and said your name out loud to see if it still feltlike a prayer. It did. I’m sorry. I miss you. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
I don’t notice I’m crying until the paper blurs. The wind nudges a spark; it leaps, flares, falls.
“Another?” I ask, voice ragged.
He nods without speaking.
I take a thicker envelope, blue lined like the stationery packs from the pharmacy everyone’s aunt used for holidays.December 24.There’s a smear where his hand dragged through wet ink.
December 24
The tree in town looks wrong without you tipping your chin up to gaze at the star. I remember when your mother cried when the angel choir forgot the second verse. Mine burned the rolls and pretended it was intentional because she said “char adds character” and I said that’s not how roll science works and she said shut up and bring me the butter. I stood under the lights after and thought about the way your hair braided down your back at eleven, like you were a girl who knew she could climb anything. I’m sorry. I miss you. I wished for you like a kid and I’m not ashamed of it.
Heat breathes against my knees. Cold tugs tears sideways and freezes them at the edges. I set the second letter on my thigh and reach for a third.
He flinches.
“Axel,” I say.
“I know,” he says, but he still flinches.
I choose a small envelope.April 3.The first sentence punches.
I saw our street from the ladder truck and it felt like cheating. I kept waiting for you to step out of your porch in that red coat with the missing button and tell me I was being dramatic. I’m sorry. Sometimes I think the only honorable thing is to run into a burn and not come back. Then I rememberyour father and I know what honor is and it isn’t that. I made pancakes. I’m terrible at flipping them. You’d laugh. Please be somewhere safe. Please be eating.
My hand shakes. I let the paper go and it slides into the lap of the first two, fresh tears staining stationary.
Across the fire, Axel’s jaw locks. He has that look men get when they’re too big for their skin. He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets because if he doesn’t, he’ll do something he swore he wouldn’t—touch me before I ask.
“You don’t have to read more,” he says, rough.
“I do.”
His throat works. He nods without trusting his mouth.
My lungs forget the mechanics and I have to relearn them. In. Out. The fire snaps at a knot and the sound startles a little gasp out of me.
He moves like he’s going to circle the pit. Stops himself. Drops into a crouch instead, elbows on knees, head bowed toward the flames.
“Savannah,” he says, and my name in that voice is a vow and an apology and the sound a man makes when the weight he’s carried presses down instead of forward.
I pick another from deeper in the stack, newer paper, the weight of the last few years.August 17.
I went to the Brooks lot and sat on the stone foundation because I don’t know where else to take the things that won’t shut up. Someone planted lupines without permission and I didn’t stop them because the mountain wanted color there. I’m sorry. I miss you. I dreamed you were standing on my porch, hair wet from the river, and you said “Axel, I’m cold,” and I woke up hot and ashamed and still thinking about your mouth. I’m never sending this. I just needed to put it somewhere that wasn’t my ribs.
