Annie must be his niece.
Had she grabbed his pen? Had they laughed before he got back to writing? I felt myself getting intrigued.
Jan was right. This letter was a mystery.
I kept reading.
Okay, fine. She’s really making me do this.
It’s been hard. I can’t get past one day of my life, and I feel like I’m stuck there reliving it over and over again. It even follows me into my dreams, so I can’t get any relief. I just wantoneday without having to remember what happened.
If I could give myself amnesia, I would. Maybe that would fix me.
Everyone thinks I need to startLIVINGagain, but how do I do that knowing I lost so many friends that day? Sometimes I wish I’d died too.
My heart fluttered out of my chest, flying out across the miles, wanting to soothe him. Whoever this man was, he had so much pain. I tried to imagine what it could have been. A house fire? A car accident? Or maybe he’d been in the military?
I read quickly, completely absorbed in his story now.
All the women in this town remember me for what I was. But they don’t know who I am now. I’m not the funny guy who plays all the pranks anymore. I’m not the captain of the football team. I’m not the Marine fighting the good fight. There’s only tragedy living in my heart now.
No one wants that.
It’s better that I hide out in my quiet camp, just me and the coyotes night after night.
No one can see how fucked up I am out there.
So yeah. That’s what I want for Christmas. To be left alone. I’ll never find someone who can understand what I’ve been through. I would never even find the words to tell them.
And even if I did fall in love again, I don’t think I’d ever find someone who could look past the scars. They’re my daily reminder of what I survived.
Some stories don’t have happy endings. I know mine doesn’t.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
-Levi Blackthorne
I finished reading the letter with tears streaming down my cheeks.
This poor man. Oh, this poor man.
That night, I couldn’t sleep thinking of Levi.
And at work the next day I was totally distracted. I even merged the wrong data and had to call IT in to undo my mess when I deleted a critical database.
I stayed in that state of distraction all week, imagining what Levi looked like, how hideous his scars might be, if he still felt this way or if he’d managed to find some peace over the past few years. The letter had been postmarked three years earlier.
When Jan came over for her regular Saturday morning gossip session she asked about the letter.
Taking a sip of my hot apple cider, I gave her the barest brushstrokes. I felt protective of the letter. And protective of Levi.
“It was from a grown man, not a child. And I just keep thinking about what he wrote. He seemed so sad.”
“Sad? In a letter to Santa?” Jan studied me curiously.
“Yeah. I could feel his pain coming through the page. I even…” Was I going to confess this to her? “I even tried looking him up online. I found a few Levi Blackthornes on Facebook, but only one from Red Oak Mountain.”
“Red Oak Mountain?”
