Thomas
ChapterTwelve
Mara
I don’t cry easily.
Not anymore.
There was a time when everything made me cry—birthdays, movies, commercials with puppies, even burnt toast if the morning was already bad enough.But grief rewires you in ways no one warns you about.After Sam died, tears felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford.It was either cry or survive, and surviving won.It always wins.
So it throws me off—annoys me, honestly—when I realize my eyes are stinging.
Over a letter.
A letter written more than thirty years ago, before I even existed.From a guy I never heard of and a very young Aunt Lina.Her husband’s name was Mario.Mario Lafferty.And she didn’t meet him until later.She married past her thirtieth birthday, which back then made her almost a spinster.
Once I asked her why she hadn’t married, she said she would only do it for love and love didn’t seem to be in her future.She was okay with that.
But now I’m wondering if love happened to her at a young age and she never thought it could happen again.
I read Thomas’s words, slower this time, letting them seep into the places I keep locked up.The lines where he promises to come back.The part where he says he’s not finished loving her.The part where she wrote the same thing.
It breaks something inside me.
Because love like that...
Love that certain ...
Love that brave ...
It doesn’t just disappear.It doesn’t vanish without leaving scars.
If they ever found their way back to each other, I would’ve known Thomas.Aunt Lina would’ve talked about him.She wasn’t a woman who kept joy to herself—not the Lina I grew up with.
But she did keep this to herself.
Does that mean he never came back to her?
A cold breath moves through me.
This isn’t just a letter.
This is a promise.
A young man spilling his heart onto paper for a girl who believed the whole universe tilted in his direction.
This isn’t what I expected to find in these boxes.
Old bills?Sure.
Baby pictures?Great—give me all the embarrassing childhood snapshots.
Grocery lists?Fine.Weird, but survivable.
But this?
This shoebox full of love letters between a sixteen-year-old girl and the eighteen-year-old boy sent halfway across the world?
