There was never enough later left.
Those five days were the happiest days of my life.
They were also the cruelest, because I knew exactly when they would end.
Cara died in her sleep on the fifth night, still wearing my wedding ring.
At the funeral, I stood beside her grave while rain softened the dirt.
I woke before dawn and knew before touching her.
At the funeral, I stood beside her grave while rain softened the dirt. The crowd was small. Most of the mourners were people I had never met.
As the casket lowered, a woman dressed in black approached me from behind the scattered group.
I had never seen her before.
“There are 127 letters waiting for you.”
She pressed an envelope into my palm.
“Cara was not ready to tell you why she came back,” the woman whispered. “Now she has nothing to fear.”
Inside were a brass key and one folded note.
“There are 127 letters waiting for you. Please read the oldest one first, before you read anything else.”
I looked up at the woman.
Mara drove me to a small apartment across town.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Mara,” she said. “I was Cara’s roommate.”
Mara drove me to a small apartment across town. She barely spoke until we reached Cara’s bedroom. Then she pointed toward the closet.
“She wrote to you every year,” Mara said. “Sometimes monthly.”
The trunk sat beneath a row of winter coats.
“Why did she never send them?”
“Because fear became her excuse.”
“That’s cruel.”
“It is true.”
The trunk sat beneath a row of winter coats. It was made of dark wood, with brass corners.
The first had been written three days after she left me.
My hand shook as the key turned.
Inside were envelopes tied into dated bundles, each one carrying my name in Cara’s handwriting.
The first had been written three days after she left me.
I opened it carefully.
“I am pregnant,” the letter began.
Cara wrote that she had learned the truth hours before our argument.
I stopped breathing.
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