The funeral home in Chillicothe smelled like lilies and floor wax, a scent that will forever sit at the back of my throat now. I was standing by my sister Carol’s casket, making sure the lace was straight, when the heavy oak door creaked open.

I didn’t look up at first. I assumed it was just another cousin from out of town coming to pay their respects to Carol.

Then the footsteps stopped. They were hesitant, heavy, and sounded like they belonged to someone who didn’t quite know where they were standing. I turned, and my breath just left me. It was Wayne. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since that humid summer in 1983, but I knew the set of those shoulders anywhere.

He looked older, of course. His hair had thinned and gone silver at the temples, and his face had the kind of lines that only come from a long, hard life. But when he looked at me, I felt like I was twenty-two again, standing on the porch on Paint Street, waiting for a car that never pulled into the driveway.

“Margaret,” he said. His voice was gravelly, deeper than I remembered, but it still had that same rhythm.

I didn’t move. My hands were balled into tight fists at my sides. I had buried my husband, Ronald, four years ago, and I had buried my parents long before that. I thought I was done with surprises. I thought I was done with ghosts.

“Wayne,” I whispered. I don’t even know how I managed to get his name out. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer right away. He just looked down at the shoebox he was cradling against his chest like it was something fragile, like a wounded animal. It was tied with thick, frayed twine.

“I saw Carol’s name in the paper,” he said, his eyes scanning the room before locking back onto mine. “I knew she was your sister. I figured you’d be here. I’ve been looking for you for forty years, Margaret.”

I felt a cold shiver run down my spine, even though the room was stifling. “Looking for me? Wayne, you left. You moved to Dayton and you never looked back. You didn’t even leave a note.”

He stepped closer, and I saw his hands trembling. “I didn’t leave, Margaret. I moved because my father lost the farm, but I wrote to you every single week. I sent letters to that address on Paint Street until my hands hurt. Every single one came back to me. Stamped in red. No such addressee.”

I shook my head. “That’s impossible. I lived there the whole summer. I wrote to you at the address your mother gave me, and they all came back to me too. My mother told me you moved on. She told me you found someone else in Dayton.”

“She lied,” he said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “We were both lied to.”

He set the box down on the small table next to the guest book. The lid was already off. He untied the twine, the sound of the string snapping against the cardboard sounding like a gunshot in the quiet room. He pushed the box toward me.

Inside were letters. Dozens of them. I recognized the envelopes instantly. They were mine. My handwriting, the way I used to loop my ‘g’s and ‘y’s back when I was young and foolishly in love. Every single one was stamped in bold, angry red ink. Return to sender. Addressee moved.

I reached out, my fingers shaking, and touched the top envelope. It felt like I was touching a piece of my own skin from another life. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might actually stop. I had spent forty years believing he didn’t want me. I had married Ronald because I thought I had nothing left to wait for.

“I kept them all,” Wayne said. “I thought maybe one day I’d find out why. I kept writing until the money ran out and I had to start working double shifts at the plant. I never stopped looking for you, Margaret.”