“There is something I should give you.”
She handed me an envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Sarah.
Thomas’s handwriting.
I stopped breathing.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was in the file he left with me.”
“You kept a letter from my husband for three years?”
“I didn’t know it was there until last night.”
I looked at her sharply.
“When I heard Julian’s name, I took the old box out of storage. That envelope was underneath the records.”
My fingers trembled.
Julian noticed immediately.
“Mom?”
I held up the envelope.
His expression changed.
“Is that Dad’s writing?”
“Yes.”
He came over.
“Open it.”
I couldn’t.
Not immediately.
Grief does strange things to time.
Three years disappeared beneath my fingertips.
I could remember Thomas licking envelopes at Christmas, leaving grocery notes on the refrigerator, writing ridiculous messages inside Julian’s lunch bag.
