Then, last month, my granddaughter Chloe came up to visit. She is seventeen now, a bright young thing who wanted to help her old grandpa clear out the backyard shed. It had been sitting there rotting for years, full of junk.
We were dragging out old garden hoses and rusty lawn mowers. Chloe was way in the back corner, pulling down some old cardboard boxes near where the old burn barrel used to sit.
“Hey, Grandpa, look at this,” she said.
She held up a tiny, dirt-covered scrap of charred paper. It had somehow survived all those years, tucked away under a piece of rotting plywood near the barrel. It was the top corner of an envelope, and you could still clearly see Carly’s neat college handwriting on the return address.
Before I could even open my mouth to explain, Chloe had her phone out.
“Mom always told me these letters were lost in the hospital move,” she said, tapping away at the screen. “I’m going to text her a picture of this.”
My brain just kind of stopped working for a second. I wanted to reach out and grab the phone, but I just stood there like an old fool, watching her send it.
About three hours later, the old landline phone on the kitchen wall started ringing. I don’t think I’ve answered that phone in five years. It’s usually just people trying to sell me insurance.
But this time, I knew exactly who it was. My hand was shaking so badly I could barely get the receiver up to my ear.
“Hello?” I said.
“Dad,” Carly’s voice sounded older, but it was her. It had been eleven years since we actually spoke on the phone.
“Carly,” I said, and my throat felt completely dry. “I’m so glad you called, honey.”
There was a long, heavy silence. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, and the suspense was just killing me.
“Chloe sent me a picture,” Carly said. Her voice was very flat. No anger, just flat.
“I know,” I whispered. “Carly, I am so sorry. I was hurting so bad after your mother died. The letters smelled like her lavender perfume, and I just couldn’t bear to have them in the house. I made a terrible mistake.”
