By Firelight a Letter

She had not been expecting a letter. In fact it had been nearly five years since the last one, five years since she had hoped she would never see the stiff, controlled handwriting again. The letters that generally signaled some sort of disaster was coming. She stood in front of the fireplace with the crisp white paper in her hand, contemplating tossing it onto the flames without even reading it this time. After all, what earthly good had reading his letters ever done her before? None at all, none at all. Turning it over and over in her hands, she wondered what had possessed him to wait so long before writing again. Had he moved on for a time, finding someone else, something else to focus on? Or had he momentarily regained his sanity and decided to leave her be? Would this letter be more of the same or would it finally be an apology for everything he had put her through? She weighed it in first one hand, then the other. It somehow felt heavier than the others; perhaps he had more to say this time, perhaps it was just the weight of what she expected to find when she finally broke the seal on the envelope. She raised it to her nose and sniffed it, though she knew the only scent that would reach her was that of fresh paper and ink. He was never sentimental enough for cologne or a specific scent of any kind. As many emotions as he consistently desired to evoke in her, nostalgia was never one of them. He preferred to remind her of the bad times, the pain, the uncertainty that plagued her on a daily basis, each time she looked him in the eye and realized that nothing he said, nothing he felt ever actually reached those eyes. The only thing she was ever able to believe from him was his letters. He somehow found it easier to be honest with her when he was miles away, hiding behind a return address and a postage stamp. He was brutally honest with her, reminding her of what he truly thought of her and of them. She turned the envelope over again and traced her fingertips over the address, her address. He tried so hard to keep his writing even and rigid, much like everything else, that he practically bit through to the letter inside when addressing it. It seemed this time that he had actually managed to push the ball of the pen so hard into the upstroke of the "M" in her name that a tiny hole had formed at the point. She felt herself begin to slide her fingertip under the edge of the envelope, watched herself peel it open, pulling the sheet of paper he had neatly folded into thirds out and into the light of the fire where she knew she would eventually sink to the floor to read it. Something was different this time though. There was a smaller, less precisely folded piece of yellow lined paper in the envelope with it. Unfolding it, she carefully examined the writing which she didn't recognize. It was a hand that was much freer, mush softer than his, the letters uneven and carelessly formed. She glanced at the signature and found it was from his wife.

"This will be the last letter. He finally gave up trying to reach you five years ago but wrote this last letter a few weeks before he died. I decided to mail it to you anyway though no one expects a response. Your son loved you until the day he died."

She folded it back up, put both letters back in the envelope and dropped them into the fire. It was finally over. She returned to her hospital bed where a nurse was waiting with her medication. She slipped off into a dreamless sleep, a sleep where there were no letters, no memories, and certainly no death.