“I kept running out of courage.”
“She passed away in March,” Ashley said finally. “Ovarian cancer. It was fast at the end.” She looked down at her hands. “The last thing she asked me was whether I’d found you yet. I spent three months going through her things, and I found boxes. Letters, photographs, journals. And the video.” She paused. “And this.”
She reached into her bag and set a small wooden box on the grass between us.
It was tied with a piece of twine, the old-fashioned kind. I touched the lid without opening it.
“Letters,” Ashley said. “All addressed to you. None of them mailed.”
“She passed away in March.”
***
I read them through the night.
Dozens of letters spanning thirty years, in a handwriting I recognized before I registered the words. The earliest was dated six weeks after Lily disappeared, the pen pressed hard like someone writing fast before they could stop.
She’d watched me from a distance more times than I could count. Seen my truck outside the hardware store and sat in her car for forty minutes before driving away. Attended my mother’s funeral from the back row and left before it ended because she was afraid I’d see her.
Another letter described the night she almost called.
