Dewitt picked up one of his envelopes. “This is the first one I sent.”
“Did you write all of these?”
“Every week,” he said. “I kept thinking you’d answer. After a while, I thought you’d changed your mind.”
He turned one over. The stamp had been canceled. The envelope had been opened along the edge. “Madge told me you didn’t want me writing. I believed her.”
I reached for the letters under mine. One of them had Dewitt’s old handwriting on the front, the loops still familiar. Another had my own return address. They had both traveled through the post office. Neither had made it to the person it was meant for.
“Madge worked at the post office,” I said. I could hear my voice catching. “She had access to the mail.”
Dewitt sat down slowly. “She had those letters all this time.”
There was another paper at the bottom of the stack, folded once and tucked into an envelope with his name on it. No stamp. Dewitt opened it, and I watched his thumb catch on the fold.
“I’ve never seen this,” he said.
The note was in Madge’s handwriting. I knew it from birthday cards and grocery lists left on our mother’s counter. The first few words were crossed out. There were little marks where she’d pressed too hard with the pen.
Dewitt read it once without speaking. Then he passed it to me.
“I told Lulu you had found somebody,” Madge had written. “I told you she wanted you to stop writing. I took the letters before either of you could answer. I wanted you, and I was scared you’d choose her if you knew. I kept telling myself I’d tell you after we were married. Then I told myself it would only hurt you. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
