I tried to stop, she wrote. I tried to stop writing these letters. I threw away the last three. I burned them. But I can’t stop thinking about him. Not in the way I used to. Not like I want to be with him. I just. I just want to know that he’s okay. I want to know that he’s happy. I want to know that I didn’t ruin everything.
The ninth letter was dated December 23, 2008. Christmas. The last time we had all been together before Marcus moved to Houston.
I watched you two today, she wrote. You and Raymond. The way you moved around each other in the kitchen. The way he handed you a spoon without you asking. The way you smiled at him. That’s what I wanted. Not him. That. The thing you have. The thing I have never been able to find.
The tenth letter was dated May 19, 2015. Raymond had just turned sixty-five. We had talked about retirement. We had talked about traveling.
I’m getting old, she wrote. We’re all getting old. And I’ve spent most of my life loving a man who was never mine to love. I don’t know if that’s romantic or pathetic. I don’t know if there’s a difference.
The eleventh letter was dated July 8, 2021. Raymond had been diagnosed with cancer six weeks earlier. I had not told Gloria yet. I had been waiting until I could say the words without crying.
I heard about Raymond, she wrote. I heard from Harold’s wife. I know you didn’t tell me yet. I know you were trying to find the right time. There is no right time. There is only now. I want you to know that I am here. For you. For him. For whatever you need. I know I don’t deserve to be here. I know I have done things that would make you never want to speak to me again. But I am here anyway. And I will keep being here.
There was no goodbye in that letter. There was no resolution. There was just Gloria, sixty-three years old, still writing letters she would never send, still loving a man she could never have, still showing up for a friend she believed she didn’t deserve.
I sat on my kitchen floor with eleven letters spread out around me. I had not cried at Raymond’s funeral. I had not cried when I found the shoe box. I had not cried during any of the conversations I had with Gloria in the months after.
But I cried on that kitchen floor. I cried for all of us. For Raymond, who had carried whatever secret he carried all the way to his grave. For Gloria, who had spent forty-three years writing letters to a man who was never going to write back. For myself, who had loved them both and been loved by them both and never known the full shape of what that love contained.
I cried until there was nothing left.
Then I put the letters back in the shoe box. I taped it shut. I carried it back to the attic.
And I have not opened it since.
—
That was fourteen months ago.
Gloria and I still talk. Less than before. The Tuesday dinners never came back. But we talk. We check in on each other. We are polite and careful and sometimes, on good days, almost like we used to be.
I have not told her about the letters. I have not told her that I read them all. I have not told her that I know.
