The postmarks moved around over the years. Ohio for a long time. Then Tennessee around 2003 or 2004. Then Florida starting around 2010 or so. I noted all of this on a piece of paper once, years ago, and I have no idea where that paper is now.

Dennis died in 2014. Pancreatic cancer. It was fast, which people always say like it’s a comfort, and sometimes it is and sometimes it really isn’t. He was 57. Two months between diagnosis and gone.

The Christmas after he died, the card came as usual. I sat with it for a long time at the kitchen table. I remember the coffee I’d made was getting cold while I just sat there holding it. “Merry Christmas, M.” Same as always. I don’t know exactly what I was hoping for. Something, maybe. Some explanation that would make it feel like a message. It wasn’t. It was just the same card it always was. But somehow that year it felt like the most important piece of mail I had ever received, because Dennis would never get to find out, and I had this strange feeling like I was now holding this mystery alone.

So that’s eleven more Christmases of doing exactly that. Holding it alone.

I’ll tell you something a little embarrassing. I started keeping the cards in a shoebox about fifteen years ago. All of them, going back to the ones I hadn’t thought to save in the early years, so maybe starting around card seven or eight. They’re all in there. Same card design, more or less, though it changed a few times. Same two words. Same initial. Same blue ink. My daughter found the box once when she was helping me clear out a closet and I told her it was a long story and she let it go, because she’s good like that.

This year the card arrived on December 9th, which was early. It usually comes the week before Christmas. I noticed the postmark said Georgia, like I said, and the handwriting on the envelope was different. Looser. Younger looking, if handwriting can look young, and I think it can. I stood there in the driveway in my socks and I opened it.

The inside of the card was almost completely filled with handwriting. Small and neat and clearly someone who’d written it out carefully, maybe a few times. I had to read it twice standing there before I went inside.