Nine months passed before I found the key. She had placed it in the bottom of a wooden box that I’d had since childhood, beneath a tattered and dusty copy of Tennyson. The name of the bank was printed on the side of the key chain, as was the number of the box.
Charlie and I drove to the bank together. The teller fetched a manager, who checked my ID, led us into a small room with a table and four chairs, and disappeared. He returned quickly with an ashen face and some papers for me to sign. I did, and he disappeared again, reappearing a few moments later with a small locked box. He left, pulling the curtain behind him while Charlie sat quietly, hands on knees, posture perfect, waiting patiently. I inserted the key and turned it. The click turned Charlie’s head. I flipped open the top, and inside sat three letters, all addressed to me. The handwriting was unmistakable.
The front of the first letter read To be opened now. The second read After one year. And the third After two years. I held the first in my hands, ran my finger beneath the flap, and pulled out two pages. The first sheet was a copy of the beneficiary assignment page for a $100,000 whole-life insurance policy that Emma’s father had taken out on her when she was just a child. Evidently he had acquired it before anyone knew about her condition, and neither of them had ever told me about it. The second page was a letter. I sat down in the chair next to Charlie and started. Reese, if you’re reading this, then it didn’t take. That means I am gone, and you are alone . . .
My eyes blurred, my face grew numb, and I crumbled like a house of cards. Charlie and an older security guard carried me out of the bank and placed me on a park bench where I tucked myself into a fetal ball and shook for nearly an hour.
Later that day, I finished the letter. Then I read it again, and again. Knowing she had written it in advance was a stone in my stomach. At the end of the letter she’d written: Reese, don’t keep this letter. I know you, don’t live that way. Set it free. Let it catch a tender breeze and sail away like Ulysses did so many times when we were kids.
I closed my eyes and could feel her frail, almost translucent, palm on my face, searching to strengthen me—strength despite such weakness.
Obediently I traced and cut a thin pine board, drilled and tapped in the mast—a balsam dowel—folded the letter, threaded the mast through it to form a sail, glued a one-inch candle to the oak board beneath the letter, and doused the board around it in lighter fluid. I lit the candle and shoved it off into the gentle but wide current of the Tallulah. It floated away, fifty yards, then a hundred, where finally the candle burned down, lit the fluid that had puddled around it, and ignited the entire thing. The blaze climbed five or six feet in the air, a thin stream of ash and white smoke climbed higher, and then the small ship turned, tilted sideways, disappeared beneath the bubbles, and sank almost eighty feet, coming to rest on the long-ago buried town of Burton at the bottom of the lake.
I counted the days until the first anniversary, woke before the sun, and flew down to the dock, where I ripped open the envelope, wrapped my face in the letter, and breathed. I devoured every word, every hint of her smell. I imagined the small twitches in the way her mouth would have shaped and formed the words, the tilt of her neck, and the invitation behind her eyes. I could hear her voice, then her whisper, just below the breeze off the lake.
Dear Reese,
I was reading this morning before you woke. The words reminded me. I wanted to wake you, but you were sleeping so hard. I watched you breathe, listened to your heart and felt mine, for the ten-thousandth time, trying to catch the rhythm of yours. Always so steady, so strong. I ran my finger along the crease in your palm and marveled at the power and tenderness there. I knew the moment I met you, and even more now, God touched you. Promise me you’ll never forget. Promise me you’ll remember. “To bind up the brokenhearted.” That’s your job. That’s what you do. My being gone doesn’t change that. You healed me years ago. “Above all else . . .”
Ever yours,
Emma
I spent the day looking out over the lake, running my fingers along the lines of the letter, rewriting it a hundred times, knowing her hand had made the same movements. Finally, at dark, I cut another board, secured the mast, doused the bow and stern, and shoved her off. The single light disappeared into the darkness, finally igniting into a floating inferno almost two hundred yards away. Then, without warning, the flame toppled and disappeared like a flaming arrow shot across the wall.
Another year passed, and I counted down the days like a kid to Christmas—or a convict walking death row for the last time. I didn’t need to wake because I hadn’t slept, but when morning finally came I walked slowly to the dock, dead man walking, and placed my finger inside the flap. Deliberating. Stuck somewhere between no hope and all hell. If I slid my finger one way, I’d know the last words she’d ever written. One last tender moment alone. A moment we never had. All that separated me from her last words was a little dried glue and a lifetime of closure.
I held the letter up to the sun, saw the faint traces of her handwriting hidden behind the envelope, but could make out no words. I slid my finger out from beneath the flap, recreased the fold with my thumb and index finger, and placed the letter in my shirt pocket.
Another year passed, bringing with it another Fourth of July. The outside of the envelope had yellowed and wrinkled, now smelled like my sweat, and the writing had faded, accentuated by a coffee stain below the flap. Four years had passed since I first found the letters, but seldom had five minutes elapsed that I hadn’t thought about her, that day, that evening, or how she’d run her fingers through my hair and told me to get some sleep. How I tried to turn back time, to fly around the earth like Superman, to pray like Joshua or Hezekiah and stop the sun.
But there are no do-overs in life.
Near dusk, a male cardinal perched on a limb nearby, tuned up, and reminded me of my task. I swung between the earth and the heavens, suspended by the sun-faded, wind-torn, and tattered fingers of the hammock. Reluctantly I returned the letter to my shirt pocket and unrolled the newspaper. I tapped the dowel into place, threaded the substitute sail over the mast, doused the base of the ship in lighter fluid, and gently placed the candle atop the deck. Above me, and spread across the northern tip of the lake, a shotgun pattern of fireworks filled the night sky, silencing the crickets. Somewhere south along the lake, little kids screamed and waved sparklers in circles that blurred into golden, burning circus rings where imaginary tigers roamed and jumped.
FIVE YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE I FOUND THE KEY. MY ONLY link now to the outside world is a P.O. box in Atlanta that sends all my mail to another P.O. box in Clayton, but not before it’s rerouted through a no-questions-asked mail-it center in Los Angeles. If you send me an overnight package, it’ll cross the country twice and get to me about two weeks later. For all practical purposes, I don’t exist, and no one knows if I come or go. Except Charlie. And what he knows of my secret is safe with him.
In my house, there are no mirrors.
I steadied my small craft, shoved her off, and the silent Tallulah caught her. A gentle breeze wobbled her, she straightened, turned to starboard, and the flame licked the night, climbing upward. The candle burned down, spilling flame across the decks and lighting the sky like a blue shooting star. She blazed, burned herself out, and then disappeared into the silent deep, sounding the echoes of remembrance throughout a hollow and shattered heart.