She found the letter in the desk, but the desk had a drawer, and the drawer had fifteen versions.
Draft one said: I can't do this anymore. You know why. You've always known why.
Draft two said: I need to tell you something I should have said years ago. When we were at the lake house—
Draft three still had the lake house but the second sentence was gone. In its place: I think we've grown apart in ways that matter.
Draft four removed the lake house entirely.
Draft five introduced the phrase mutual respect, which had not appeared in drafts one through four, because it hadn't needed to. You don't name what you have. You name what you're constructing in its absence.
Draft six was the first one that could have been sent to anyone.
She read them in order, the way you read tree rings — not for the wood but for the years. The droughts showed as tight bands. The good years barely registered.
Draft nine had a paragraph about Tuesday mornings. It started: The thing I'll miss— and then the paragraph was struck through, not deleted but crossed out, as though the hand had changed its mind while the pen was still touching the paper. The next draft didn't have the paragraph at all. The crossing-out survived one draft. The content survived none.
Draft twelve was professional enough to frame. It used cherish and chapter and grateful for the time we shared. It was the kind of letter that gets read at the service and makes everyone nod. It was built from the ruins of eleven previous letters the way a seawall is built from the ruins of previous seawalls: each failure teaching the next wall where the waves actually hit.
Draft thirteen removed cherish.
Draft fourteen put it back.
Draft fifteen — the one in the envelope, the one that was sent, the one she'd received and opened and read and put away in her own drawer seven years ago — said nothing that drafts one through fourteen had said. It was perfectly clear, perfectly kind, and perfectly sealed. Reading it was like reading the menu at a restaurant that had already closed. The kitchen was dark. The specials board had been wiped. But the menu still listed everything, priced and described, as though someone might still order.
She put the drafts back in the drawer in order. She did not take the first one, though she wanted to. It was the only one that had been written to her. The rest had been written to get past her.