Chapter 2 - The First Letter
I slept on the couch that night. I couldn’t bring myself to climb the stairs to the bedroom we’d shared — the room where I’d lain beside her, my back turned, counting the days until I could have the house to myself. The couch was softer than the seat of my pickup, but it felt a thousand times colder. At dawn, I made coffee. I used the blue mug Evelyn had bought me for Christmas, the one with the stupid fishing scene on it that I’d pretended to hate. The coffee was too sweet, the way she always made it, and for a second I could almost see her standing at the stove, humming that old Patsy Cline song she loved, her gray hair pulled back in a bun.
I sat down at the table and picked up the first letter.
The envelope was cream-colored, the address written in her careful hand: Caleb — Month One.
I slid my finger under the flap and unfolded the paper.
My dear Caleb,
If you’re reading this, I’m already gone. And you’re angry. Furious, probably. You think I tricked you. That I promised you a future and then took it away at the last minute. I understand. I’d be angry, too. But I need you to hear me out, if you can. Just for a few minutes.
I saw you the day we met, you know. Not just the man who knelt to pick up my books — the boy underneath. You had on a flannel shirt with a hole in the elbow, and your boots were cracked so badly I could see your socks through them. But you smiled at me, and it was the saddest smile I’d ever seen. Like you were already apologizing for existing.
I knew right then what you wanted. I’ve wanted it myself. Safety. A roof. A place to lay your head at night and not wonder if you’ll still be there in the morning. I married Arthur for exactly those things. I was twenty-two, my mother was sick, we were about to lose the apartment, and Arthur asked me. He was sixty-two, a widower, lonely, and he had this house. I said yes without hesitating. I told myself I was being practical. I told myself love was for girls who could afford it.
I spent forty years in this house. Forty years of warm meals and soft beds and Christmases that felt like a play I was acting in. Arthur was a good man. He never hurt me. He gave me everything I thought I wanted. But I never told him about the way my chest ached when I saw young couples walking down the street holding hands. I never told him I used to sit in the backyard and cry because I couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched me like I mattered, not like something to be taken care of.
I don’t want that for you, Caleb. You’re twenty-five. You have your whole life ahead of you. If I’d left you this house, you would have spent the rest of your days here, comfortable and safe and just as empty as I was. You would have become me. And that’s the one thing I couldn’t bear.
The box has things in it that are worth more than any house. The journal you’ve already read — that’s me, laid bare. The letters — each one is a piece of what I learned in forty years of living a life I didn’t choose. And the key… well, you’ll find out about the key soon enough.
I need you to do something for me. Don’t open the next letter until you’ve read this one a hundred times, if you have to. Don’t rush. I waited forty years to tell someone these things. You can wait a few days to hear them.
You’re not a bad person, Caleb. You’re just a person who’s been hungry for too long. And hungry people do desperate things. But hunger ends. And when it does, you have to figure out what you’re actually living for.
I hope you find it.
With all my love,
Evelyn
I read the letter once. Then twice. Then a third time, until the words blurred together and I realized I was crying.
I hadn’t cried since I was twelve years old, the night my father walked out and my mother sat on the kitchen floor and told me everything was going to be okay while the lights got turned off for nonpayment. I’d learned early that tears were useless. They didn’t pay bills. They didn’t put food on the table. They didn’t stop the cold from seeping into your bones when you were sleeping in the back of a truck in December.
But now I couldn’t stop.
I thought about Evelyn. About the way she’d leave notes on my pillow when she got up early — Have a good day or I made cookies, they’re on the counter. About the night I came home sick with the flu, burning up, and she’d sat beside the bed all night, pressing cold cloths to my forehead and feeding me soup even when I’d snapped at her to leave me alone. About the way she’d look at me sometimes, across the dinner table, like she was seeing something I couldn’t see myself.
She’d known. All along. And instead of throwing me out, instead of changing the locks and telling me to go to hell, she’d spent two years being kind to me. She’d fed me. She’d clothed me. She’d written me letters and kept a journal about me and planned for my future even while I was secretly wishing for her death.
I felt sick.
I went to the bathroom and threw up. When I looked in the mirror, I barely recognized myself. My eyes were red, my face was pale, and there was a hollow look in my eyes that I’d never seen before.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around the house, touching things. The quilt on the bed that Evelyn’s mother had made. The stack of books on the nightstand — romance novels, the kind she’d read with a cup of tea every evening. The garden tools in the garage, still caked with dirt from the last time she’d planted roses.
Everything in this house was hers. Not mine. Never mine. I’d been a guest here for two years, a boarder who’d paid with fake smiles and silent calculations, and I’d never even had the decency to be grateful.
That evening, there was a knock on the door.
I opened it to find Clara, Evelyn’s niece, standing on the porch with her arms crossed. She was in her forties, sharp-faced, wearing a designer coat that probably cost more than I’d made in a year of construction work. Behind her, a man I didn’t recognize — her husband, maybe — leaned against a fancy SUV, scrolling on his phone.
“Caleb,” Clara said, her voice like ice. “I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re settling into… well, how you’re doing.”
I knew what she was doing. She was checking to make sure I hadn’t stolen the silver.
“Clara,” I said. “Come in.”
She stepped inside, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor, and looked around like she was inspecting property. Which, I supposed, she was. “Nice house,” she said, though her tone said she thought it was a dump. “Aunt Evelyn always did have good taste. Even if her judgment in husbands was… questionable.”
I didn’t rise to it. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you. I won’t be staying long. I just wanted to let you know that the moving trucks will be here on the twenty-eighth. I’m planning to renovate the kitchen first — these old cabinets are hideous — and then probably list the place. The neighborhood is up and coming. Should sell for a pretty penny.”
She smiled at me, and it was the meanest smile I’d ever seen.
“I’m sure Evelyn would be thrilled,” I said quietly.
Clara laughed. “Oh, I doubt Aunt Evelyn cared much about anything once she got it into her head to play rescuer to you. Honestly, I was relieved when the will was read. I thought for sure she’d left everything to the boy toy. But even she wasn’t that far gone, I guess.”
Her husband called from the porch. “Clara, let’s go. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Coming,” she said, never taking her eyes off me. “Enjoy your last few weeks, Caleb. Try not to break anything. The damage deposit on the house doesn’t cover emotional distress, but I’m sure we can find something to charge you for.”
She turned and walked out, the door slamming behind her.
I stood there for a long time, my hands clenched into fists.
Clara thought I was trash. She thought I was a gold digger, a user, a loser who’d tried to cheat her aunt out of her fortune.
And the worst part?
She was right.
That night, I picked up the second letter.
I didn’t wait a few days. I didn’t read the first one a hundred times. I needed to know what else Evelyn had to say. I needed to understand why she’d done what she’d done.
The envelope was marked Month Two.
May you like
I opened it, and as I read the first line, my breath caught in my throat.
The day Arthur died, I didn’t cry. Not at the funeral, not at the burial, not when they handed me the flag. I felt guilty about that for years. But the truth was, I didn’t mourn Arthur. I mourned the girl I’d been when I married him. The girl who’d had dreams, and hopes, and a whole life ahead of her that she traded for four walls and a roof…
