“Then why keep it?” she asks. “You refuse to open it to find out the truth. You say you don’t want to know, but you won’t get rid of the letter. You’re holding on to it for something, Sienna, and it ain’t for sentimental value.”
I sigh.
“I’m holding on to it because I’m not ready.”
She steps up beside me and lays her head on my shoulder. She smells like fruity perfume and chlorine.
“You can never be ready to face something like that,” she says, “but by not opening it, you’ll never find closure—it’ll destroy you either way.”
I say nothing and hold my tears deep inside.
Paige hugs me and then picks her purse up from the chair nearby.
“I have to go to work,” she says. “Think about Friday night, OK? I miss my best friend.”
I look at her without eye contact and nod.
Once Paige leaves, I go back into my room and open my desk drawer. Kendra’s letter stares back at me next to some pens and cute stationery. The date stamp reads July. “It’s addressed simply to “c/o Sienna” because she probably never knew or remembered my last name. And the address reads “Harrington Planners.” It probably wasn’t too difficult to get the address of where I worked.
I stand here for ten minutes, unmoving, staring down at the letter, my tear-filled eyes following the pretty cursive flow of Kendra’s handwriting, the curvy tail of the “K” in her name, the fancy swirl of the “S” in mine, and I think about opening it again. For a while it takes everything in me not to. I have to know, I say to myself, the same thing I’ve said to myself since the day I got it. The day the world stopped spinning on its axis.
My heart died that day. It just died. I wondered how I was still able to breathe as I left the office.
But the more I stare at it, the more I realize that I already know. Why would Kendra write to me at all? Why would she write instead of Luke? Why would she go out of her way to track down my address just to send me a letter? And why would she send a handwritten letter anyway? She could have just as easily sent an email through the company website.
Because handwritten letters are more personal.
You don’t break up with someone in an email or a text message. And you sure as hell don’t tell someone in an email or a text message that someone they cared deeply for died.
I already know what’s inside that envelope, but I’m not ready for the finality. Maybe a part of me wants to hold on to the lie for as long as I can. Sometimes lies are more comforting than the truth.
THIRTY-THREE
Sienna
I spend the next few days trying to put Luke out of my mind. But that letter from Kendra haunts me. I can’t sleep at night, especially with it being in my room. I think about him every second of every day, and it’s only getting worse—the feelings I carry, the fear of him being gone forever, weighing me down.
Every day I come home from work and find myself sitting on the sofa for hours with the television off, listening to the sound of the neighbors walking across the floor in the upstairs apartment.
I expect tonight to be no different, but the second I close my apartment door and slide the chain over, I burst into sobs. Sitting against the front door with my back pressed against it and my legs drawn up, bent at the knees, I drag my hands through the top of my hair and sniffle back my tears. Minutes pass—it feels like an hour—and I’m still sitting on the floor in the same spot, torturing myself with memories of Hawaii, of Luke. I let my head fall back against the door and I gaze up at the ceiling, watching the blades on the ceiling fan move around and around, hypnotizing me, but still all I see is his face.
Finally I get up and storm my way into my bedroom, nearly tripping over a laundry basket, tears streaming down my cheeks, tears of anger and guilt and fear. I yank open the desk drawer and take Kendra’s letter into my fingers. And I stare at it. My eyes burn and I feel sick to my stomach and my head throbs.
Biting down hard, I slip my finger behind the tiny opening at one corner of the envelope and drag it harshly across, ripping it open. My tears get heavier, burning my nostrils and sinuses, blurring my vision. The envelope falls to the floor beside my shoes. The folded paper in my hand feels like the weight of the world. It’s so heavy, so painfully heavy.
I start to open it, but stop just as my fingers disappear behind the top fold. Choking on my tears, I crush the single sheet of paper in my hand and hold it against my chest, screaming to myself under my breath, close-lipped, teeth gritted, until I can’t see straight and my eyes slam shut.
I rip the paper to shreds without reading it and let each piece fall to the floor.
I need air. I can’t breathe.
I run out of my room, down the hall, through the living room, and out the front door into the cool night air.
I stop cold in my tracks, and what breath I have left is knocked right out of me when I see Luke staring back at me from the end of the sidewalk, his hands buried in the pockets of his jeans.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sienna
For a time that feels like forever, I can’t speak. I don’t blink. I feel like I’m hallucinating. Are my feet moving? I never realized I had been slowly walking toward him. Maybe he was walking toward me. I don’t know.
Luke smiles.
I shake my head over and over again, racked by overwhelming disbelief and relief and a hundred other emotions I can’t name.
“Sienna—”
Dashing across the sidewalk, I sprint toward him and fall into his arms.
“You’re OK!” I cry into his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around me, squeezing me nearly to death. “You’re not dead!”