unopened letter and wondered where it would be best to open it. Here in her now tidy office? Or the living room where they watched TV and ate lunch together when Paul was home?
When he wasn’t home, she’d read a book while she ate, always eating more than she wanted to because she didn’t want to stop reading.
Or perhaps she’d open it outside in the garden on the bench under the tree. Bree decided against the garden because she hadn’t been outside since Paul died, and she knew all she would see was work that needed to be done to bring the garden back to health.
No, she thought. It made sense to open the letter where she wrote and ran her business. That way, perhaps she could read the letter without becoming too emotional.
“Yea, right,” she said out loud.
Reaching into her desk drawer, she took out her letter opener and, after pausing once more, slit the top of the envelope and pulled out the letter.
Although stickers of flowers, birds, trees, and hearts plastered the envelope, the letter was a sheet of plain white paper. Bree recognized Paul’s precise printing and, of course, his sprawling signature after the last line, which she read first as she always did.
You were and always will be the love and light of my life. Yours, forever, Paul
“Yea, right,” Bree said again out loud. “That’s why you left me all alone.”
Bree knew she was being unreasonable. It wasn’t his fault that he died. But after reading the entire letter, she felt even angrier.
Her first impulse was to tear it into tiny bits or take it directly to the shredder. But she didn’t.
Instead, she left the letter lying in the middle of the desk, stood, grabbed her keys, and left the house for the first time in a month. She had planned to take the car and start driving—somewhere, anywhere—but when she opened the garage door and a blast of air carrying the scent of spring flowers rushed in, she decided to walk instead.
But first, she grabbed her hat and sunglasses, disguising herself as much as possible, hoping none of her neighbors would recognize her so she could remain inside her shell.
The truth is, Bree thought as she turned the corner heading for the park a few blocks away, they probably wouldn’t recognize me anyway, and for sure they don’t know me.
That had been her intention, hadn’t it? To be invisible? No one but Paul and the people she worked with knew that she was R.B. Curtis, a well-known romance writer. R for her first name, Rhoberta. But she never used that name, going by her middle name, Bree, instead. The C was for Curtis, her maiden name. Yes, her circle of friends knew her last name of Curtis, but there were lots of people named Curtis.
Bree knew her mother had named her Rhoberta after her own mother, trying to make her mother happy because she had gotten pregnant by one of the many boys she had “goofed around with.” Bree never knew who her father was, even though she had begged to know. Probably her mother didn’t even know.
Yes, she had also tried to please her mother, which was a lost cause. Her mother remained locked in her past and drank herself to death shortly after the wedding.
Thankfully, her mother was fairly sober on Bree’s wedding day, and her mother walking her down the aisle was one of Bree’s treasured memories. She was also grateful that her mother had not seen what happened after she married or who she had become herself.
Not a drunk like her mother. Instead, she had become a recluse, hiding from the world and the pain it contained, making up her own world where everything was perfect.
She and Marsha had recognized that in each other. Although they each handled an out-of-control mother and absent and non-existent father differently, it was another thing that had bound them together.
A sob caught Bree by surprise. Stumbling to a park bench hidden partly by a newly blooming lilac bush, she realized she had opened a door she had shut years before. And now there they were, back in her mind. Her friends. The safe space.
Paul had done it. She knew that’s what he intended. And although she wanted to hate him or scream at him for doing it, she knew he meant it to be a last gift to her.
It was a gift that she had a choice to accept or not. But if she did, it was going to open up old wounds.
“Although it might open up old joys, too,” Bree heard.
It was as if the wind moving through the lilacs had brought the words Paul might have spoken along with the lilac’s unique and unforgettable scent.
It’s hard to feel angry around a lilac, Bree thought.
And then she let herself look around. The entire park was awash in the colors of spring. Winter was over. The question Bree had to answer for herself was if she was willing for her winter to be over, too. And if she was, what would she become?
Would her friends forgive her? Would she ever forgive herself?
A hummingbird, maybe fresh from his long trip, hovered directly in front of Bree’s face, her body hovering between furiously beating wings. The two stared at each other, and then the hummingbird dipped, turned, and flew to the bush, wings still beating the air, the soft sound they made filling Bree’s heart.
She knew the hummingbird was a harbinger of things to come. Bree leaned back against the bench, lifted her face to the sky, and let the sun beat down on her face. Eyes closed, she saw the letter again in her mind’s eye.
She saw Paul’s words, “Yours forever,” and decided to believe them. At least for now.