I read another.
Two years later.
Laura,
Henry says you have been promoted.
Congratulations.
I told him I was not surprised.
He told me I should tell you that myself.
I told him to mind his own business.
Since he appears physically incapable of doing so, I am writing this.
I laughed through a sudden sting in my eyes.
Dad had written nineteen beginnings.
Nineteen attempts to cross the distance.
And then stored every one in a drawer.
I understood immediately.
Every letter was imperfect.
None said enough.
So he sent none.
Perfection had done what anger could not.
It had maintained the silence.
I put them back in the box.
“I need to talk to him.”
Dad was in Grandpa’s garden when I found him that afternoon.
He stood beside a row of tomato plants Grandpa had insisted on growing despite producing tomatoes nobody particularly liked.
Dad looked at the box in my hands.
“Oh.”
One syllable.
That was all.
“Why didn’t you send them?”
He looked toward the garden.
“I kept rewriting them.”
“For nine years?”
“Yes.”
“That is an astonishingly inefficient postal strategy.”
He smiled faintly.
“I suppose it is.”
I held up the oldest letter.
“This one was fine.”
“It wasn’t an apology.”
“No.”
