If you’re somewhere safe. Please, stay safe. As soon as they release me—if they release me, I will find you.
I’m not sorry for going in first. I don’t regret my decision.
Because I love you with all my heart.
I’ll write again soon, as soon as I can.
Love,
R
I flip the envelope over, searching for the letters she mentions. One corner flap is bent, and I carefully press it back, finding slightly smudged letters, written in red lead: XjrKoII. A code, but no return address. She didn’t tell me where I can physically find her. The hints aren’t enough. Too far away to walk?
Nothing is too far…
She’s alive. She’s safe. For now. Or then, when she sent this.
My heart races as I reach for the most recent letter, not able to weed through the rest first. I need to know she’s still all right. She must be if she’s written. She must be.
I tear open the envelope with haste and unfold the same type of paper, shredded at the top and bottom.
April 17, 1943
Dear Stefan,
Another letter. Another day of not giving up hope that you’re alive.
The baby of this couple is eight months old now, but they still require help. I’ve begged to be released but it didn’t end well, and I won’t be doing that again.
I wish there was a way for me to know you are safe. But as I’ve mentioned in earlier letters, I won’t receive correspondence through the post. And no one like us is allowed in the area I’m in.
I hope you know…If a clock could speak in syllables rather than measures, there would be two more hours today. What I wouldn’t give for any hour to read your words. For us to find each other and connect through time…
You might have been born on the third of April, ’21, but I’ll never forget the following twelve months that led to the 21stof April, ’23 at 11:01.
Those fifteen years, eighteen hours, twenty-three minutes, and nine seconds brought us together in May at the thirteenth hour of the day.
Time will wait for us. Time is always the answer.
I love you. Every day, every hour, every minute, second, and breath.
R
I read the note again, scratching my head, confused and wondering whether she’s all right, coherent, and aware of what she’s saying. My birthday isn’t the 3rd of April. I wasn’t born in 1921, or on the 21st of April in 1923.
Fifteen years? That would have been 1938. We met in 1940. May. We lost the business in May but in the morning, not after noon.
My eyes strain the longer I stare at her words, rereading the entire note repeatedly before stopping at:
Time is always the answer.
What I wouldn’t give for any hour to read your words…
If a clock could speak syllables…
I lie back down, shoving my coat beneath my head, and clutch her letters against my chest. Time is always the answer. My eyes burn as I imagine the numbers on the wall beside me. Numbers. Not dates. Not hours. Letters. A code—a message she’s trying to send me, so I’ll find her. I swear on my life I will find her.
THIRTY-ONE
