THE LETTER KEEPER

had arrived three weeks ago, addressed to Mrs. Eleanor Hartwell at 42 Maple Street-a house that had stood empty for two years since Eleanor's passing. Margaret had done what she always did

I have maybe six months, probably less. Pancreatic cancer, stage four. They caught it too late, just like we caught everything too late in our family. I don't have anyone here, Mom. Sarah left me ten years ago-she said I was too angry, too closed off, and she was right. The kids sided with her in the divorce, and I can't blame them. Jessica is married now, living in Seattle with two little ones I've never met. Michael is in college, studying to be a teacher. They send Christmas cards, but we don't talk. I made the same mistakes with them that I made with you. I find myself thinking about home, about you, about the way you used to make blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings and how you never gave up on Dad's garden even after he couldn't tend it himself. I remember how you'd sit by his bedside reading to him from those mystery novels you both loved, even when the doctors said he couldn't hear you anymore. You never stopped believing he was still there, still listening. I know I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I'm hoping maybe you might want to see me one more time. I've been saving money for a plane ticket-not easy on disability, but I've been cutting corners. I just need to know if you'd want me to come home. I know I said terrible things about Millbrook when I left, called it a dead-end town full of dead-end people. I was wrong about that too. Maybe it's not too late for me to come home and tell you all the things I should have said years ago. I love you, Mom. I never stopped loving you, even when I was too proud to say it. Even when I convinced myself that staying away was protecting you from my anger and disappointment. I see now that I was just protecting myself from having to face what I'd done. Please write back. Please tell me it's not too late. Your son, James P.S. - I still have the watch Dad gave me when I graduated high school. I wear it every day. I thought you'd want to know that. Margaret's hands trembled as she set the letter down. She looked at the postmark-it was dated just four months ago. Four months after Eleanor had been laid to rest in the Millbrook Cemetery, under the old oak tree she'd always loved, the one where her husband Robert was buried five years earlier. Margaret sat back in her chair, feeling the weight of what she'd just read. The silence in the post office seemed to press around her, broken only by the tick of the old clock