On the fourth week a letter arrived with no return address. The envelope was cream-colored, square, with Doris's name in a careful handwriting that Meg did not recognize. Inside, a single card:
The hellebores came early this year. I thought you'd want to know.
Meg put it on the kitchen counter and looked at it for most of the afternoon.
The second letter arrived in May. Same envelope, same handwriting, same absence of return address. The gate latch finally gave out. Gerald replaced it with something from the hardware store that works perfectly and looks wrong.
Doris had been dead since February. Meg had sold the house, distributed the furniture, filed the paperwork. There was no Doris to receive these letters. There was also no way to tell the sender.
The third came in June. The Hendersons' dog got out again. He sat in the middle of the road with enormous dignity until Marion came with the leash. I don't think he was lost. I think he wanted to be retrieved.
Meg started keeping them in a shoebox. She told herself she was collecting evidence — that eventually there would be enough detail to identify the sender, a street name, a town. But the letters were careful. They described a world without locating it. Hellebores and gate latches and a dog in a road. Each one a window into a place she couldn't find on any map.
By October she had seven. She knew the hellebores were under a stone wall. She knew Gerald was handy but not gifted. She knew the Hendersons had three children and a dog with enormous dignity and Marion had a green coat and the sender's kitchen window faced east because the light was always mentioned in the morning.
She did not know who they were. She did not know if they knew Doris was dead.
It occurred to her, around the eighth letter, that the letters might not require an answer. That they might be a form of correspondence that completed itself in the sending. The careful handwriting, the cream-colored envelopes, the single card — all of it suggested someone for whom the writing was the relationship. Whether Doris read them, whether Doris responded, whether Doris was alive: these might be secondary to the fact that on certain mornings the light came through an east-facing window and someone sat down and wrote to her.
Meg considered this. It was either the saddest thing she'd ever encountered or not sad at all.
The ninth letter, in December: Snow before Advent for the first time in six years. The gutters are holding. The silence has a different quality when everything is white — not quieter exactly, but more unanimous.
She read it twice. She put it in the shoebox with the others. She made tea.
In January she bought cream-colored envelopes and a pen with a nib fine enough for careful handwriting. She did not write to the sender — she had no address, and what would she say? She wrote to Doris.
The estate is settled. The house sold to a young couple who have already painted the kitchen. I kept the weather notebooks from the attic. Someone has been writing to you and I thought you'd want to know.
She put it in the shoebox. She did not mail it. There was nowhere to send it. But the writing was the relationship, and whether Doris read it was secondary to the fact that on a certain morning the light came through a window and someone sat down and wrote.