She kept every one. Forty-two years of letters, from summer camp to my last thank-you note for the Christmas scarf.
I found them in a shoebox under her bed, tied with kitchen twine. Also in there: a takeout menu from the Clam Shack, annotated in the margins. "Ate alone. He would have wanted the fried clams."
That was the day Dad died. She never said a word about it.
George doesn't fish anymore. He just sits on the dock, watching the water, sometimes waving at the gulls.
I brought the shoebox down one grey afternoon. George glanced at it, nodded, and pulled out his old crab pot.
We tore the letters into strips. Each one a year of my life, a confession, a joke, a question. The menu went in last.
The smoke smelled like paper and salt. George said, "She's done with them. Now you are too."
The wind took the ash out over the bay. I thought about all those words. They were already in me. I didn't need the paper anymore.