I have the letters now. They’re in a box in my closet. I’ve read most of them. Some I still can’t finish without putting them down for a while. I don’t know what happens next between Margaret and me.

We talk on the phone every couple days now. She’s still scared I’ll disappear.

But I think about that bench. How she looked up and smiled and said she knew I’d be tall. After everything, the letters, the rejection, the years of silence, she smiled.

I haven’t gone back to Chicago yet. I haven’t told her I read them all. But I will. She wrote a hundred and twelve letters for me. The least I can do is show up.