She wrote to me again. She’s always writing me letters, like we’re in some other century. I won’t say it suits me—my eyes are getting bad and I could do with some new glasses—but she won’t do things any other way, not that there’s all that many other ways hereabouts. No Internet, and the satellite phone’s spotty. So she writes. A letter a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes it’s just a few words, sometimes it’s pages and pages where she’s going on and on about her instructions, as if I didn’t already have them down cold from when I was there.
Picking up her letters means going all the way to the post office, although I don’t go every week now. I don’t see the point. At first, there were things to tell her about, and that seemed to keep her happy. But now she’s just getting older and getting needier. She thinks I’m not telling her enough.
What I wouldn’t give to see her here, show her that it’s nature that sets the pace and that means things move slowly, very slowly. Winter months where nothing happens, where you just while away the hours reading or fixing up odds and ends around the house, and summer months—if you could call it summer—where the real work happens, and there’s so much to tend to even though I’m getting on in years.
I know how to wait. I’ve spent years on the lookout, waiting here is nothing new for me. Sometimes, though, it feels like I’m starting to disappear. I’ve lost too much time hoping for something to shift, watching for the signs, and now I’m at that age where time’s a precious thing I haven’t got so much of anymore. Here, you can forget everything and be forgotten. Now that I’ve probably given her the answers she wanted, I do hope she remembers she’s the one who sent me to this corner of the world. I won’t be around forever. I’m too old now.