First Lines

It was Marcus.

He stood on the porch with a flashlight and an expression that managed to be both apologetic and entirely unsurprised, which Clara found unreasonably irritating.

"The porch light," he said. "I promised your mother I'd fix the wiring. I forgot it was late. I'm sorry — I can come back."

"It's midnight, Marcus."

"I know." He looked down at the flashlight. "I'll come back tomorrow."

She was going to say fine. She was going to close the door. Instead she stepped back and said, "There's coffee on."

They sat at the kitchen table and said almost nothing for twenty minutes, which was somehow not awkward. He looked the same — the same brown eyes, same careful way of holding his cup. He asked about her work. She asked about the bookshop. It was careful and ordinary and she kept thinking about the letter upstairs and how it felt like a third person in the room.

He left at twelve-forty. She watched him walk to his truck.

Then she went upstairs and she opened the letter.

It was three sentences.

I know you have to go. I know you won't come back. But I want you to know I loved you since we were seventeen, and I'm not sorry.

That was all.

She sat on the edge of her bed for a long time. The room was very quiet. When she started crying she was almost surprised by it — she hadn't cried in years, had started to wonder if she still could.

She slept badly and woke up with a clarity she hadn't expected.

She drove to Clement Street at nine. Marcus was unlocking the shop. He turned when he heard her footsteps and she held up the letter, and something in his face shifted — not surprise, exactly. More like recognition.

"I found it," she said. "Under the floorboard."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out another envelope, this one newer, the paper less yellowed.

"I wasn't sure you'd ever come back," he said. "So I kept writing anyway." He held the envelope out. "There are nine more. I didn't know what else to do with them."