Straight From the Heart
Chapter 3
She picked up
the letter she had found and looked at it closely. It was a sealed envelope
with no address on it. She had found it a week ago and had been dying to open
it, but she didn't know if she should. It wasn't hers and it wasn't addressed
to her, but she didn't know who it did belong to. All she knew about this
letter was that she had found it one week ago along the river that ran through
her back woods. It was in a waterproofed type of packaging. Her guess was that someone
had written this letter with no intention of anyone ever reading it. The river
that ran by her back woods led to the ocean eventually. Once the letter got
there, it would be gone forever.
So no one was
supposed to read this letter then. What was she supposed to do with it? She had
two options: open it and read it or leave it sealed and put it back on its
journey to the ocean. She wondered if there was any others and what harm there
would be in reading this one. She didn't know what to do.
She glanced at
the clock and suddenly realized she was late to meet her neighbor for lunch.
They had a standing lunch date for Saturday afternoon. It was their chance to
catch up the things they hadn't shared with each other through the week. They
saw each other nearly every day in some way or another. She knew her neighbor
was really her best friend and practically her only friend at all. She sensed
that was even truer for her neighbor.
They were having
lunch at her neighbor's house, so she pulled on her sandals and got ready to
leave. As a last thought, she decided to take the letter with her. She walked
the short distance down the road to the house next door. It resembled her own
and they both looked like little cottages in the woods. They sat back from the
road and were surrounded by trees. She knocked on the white front door and only
waited a minute before it began to open.
She smiled at
the woman who opened the door and then gave her a quick hug. "Hi, Caitlin,
sorry I'm late," she apologized.
Caitlin Jackson
was just about the most beautiful person she had ever mer. She was petite and
thin. Her long, wavy, dark hair fell past her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes
lit up when she smiled, which was nearly every minute. And her smile was
contagious. No one could help, but smile when she did. She could have been a
model in another life. Perhaps she was, no one really knew all that much about
her, except her neighbor, and even she didn't know much.
"That's all
right. I'll forgive you this time," Caitlin laughed. She stood back and
let her friend in. "Besides, it gave me time to finish getting lunch
ready."
"You
cooked?" she said in disbelief.
Caitlin laughed
again. "If you have to ask, you really don't know me all that well,"
she joked. She led the way to the kitchen. "Come on in, I'm almost done.
Have a seat at the table, Jess." She motioned to the corner table near the
bay window that was set for two people.
Jess sat in a
chair facing the rest of the kitchen. She pulled the letter from her pocket and
put it on the table.
"So how was
work this week?" Caitlin asked as she spooned various cut-up fruits into a
bowl.
"Great. I
settled two of my cases out of court and one of my others was pushed back two
weeks, so now I have more time to prepare."
"Like you
need it. That's all you ever do. You're always at the office until all hours of
the night."
"That's why
I keep telling you that you're my only friend," she smiled. "You're
the only person I ever see that I don't work with. I don't even see my sister
more than once a month anymore. She's been busy lately, too. Between her
daughter, her work, and my work, we never see each other. And to make matters
worse, now she's found herself a boyfriend."
"Really?
Maybe you need to get yourself on of those if you think that's a bad
thing," Caitlin joked.
"Me? You've
been celibate as long as I've known you. Unless you're not telling me
something."
"Yeah,
yeah. So, your sister's boyfriend, does he have a brother?"
"Why? You
interested?"
Caitlin threw a
napkin at her. "No! I meant for you!" She brought the rest of the
food to the table and sat down. "So does he?"
"Have a
brother? Actually, yes, he does," Jess laughed.
"Younger or
older?"
"Younger by
about seven years," she began to eat one of the club sandwiches. "She
was supposed to meet him today for the first time."
"You ought
to see how available the brother is," Caitlin suggested.
"Actually,
I already know. My sister says that from what her boyfriend says about him,
he's not ready to date anyone yet."
"Ready?
Why? What happened?"
"Ever the
curious one, aren't you?" Jess laughed. "Apparently, he's had two
major things, I guess tragedies, happen to him rather recently, but she doesn't
know what they are. Her boyfriend wouldn't tell her."
"What's his
name?"
"Her
boyfriend or his brother?"
"Both."
"Her
boyfriend's name is Jerry. I don't know what his brother's name is yet."
"Yet,
huh?" Caitlin grinned. She left it open ended as they both began to eat.
Half an hour
later, they were starting to clean up the table when Caitlin noticed the
envelope on the table. Jess was at the sink as she picked it up. "Jess?
What's this envelope here?"
Jess glanced at
what she had in her hands. "Oh, I forgot I brought that. It's a letter I found
last week. I brought it to see if you could help me figure out what to do with
it." She told Caitlin the story behind finding it and her theories on what
should be done with it.
When she was
finished, Caitlin said, "So there are two options. One, we open it and
read it, knowing whoever wrote it will never find out. Or two, we put it back
in the river to go wherever it goes, respecting the original intent of the
writer. Now, here's my philosophy. I think if we don't open it, there is no
telling who might. If we put it back in the river, someone else may find it and
who knows what they'll do with it, right?" Her curiosity had gotten the
better of her the more she thought about it. She really wanted to see what it
said.
"I don't
know, Caitlin, isn't it kind of an invasion of someone's privacy? Would you
want someone to open it if you had done this?" Jess was skeptical, but
wavering more each minute.
"It
probably is, but you know you're as curious as I am. And no one will find out
if we don't tell them, right?" Her eyes danced with excitement. She saw
the brief flash of enthusiasm in Jess's eyes and without waiting for any
further prompting, Caitlin began to open the letter.
It took her a
few minutes to get past the plastic waterproofing, but soon she held the actual
envelope in her hands. It was kind of thick, like there were several pieces of
paper in it. Jess came to the table to look at it with her and they both sat
down again, the lunch cleanup forgotten. Caitlin slipped a finger under the
flap on the back of the envelope and tried to open it as carefully as possible.
Jess watched in anticipation as she took out the stationary, which turned out
to be two heavy pieces of paper.
Caitlin scanned
the first page, taking in the neat handwriting of a man. There was a signature
'J' in the corner and the writing began below it. She cleared her throat and
began to read it aloud. "February 15," Caitlin broke off immediately.
"Jess, this was written almost six months ago."
"Assuming
it was this year. Is there a year on it?"
"Yeah, it
was this year. Six months ago...wow, I wonder when they put it in the
river?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Anyway..."
"My Brenda,
Yesterday was Valentine's Day and to be truthful, I didn't go
anywhere. I couldn't face all those people in love. So now it's the next day
and all I can think of is you, but you're all I ever think about anyway. I
never celebrated that holiday with Shannon and in a way, I'm glad. I could
never match what we had, but that's true every day, not just Valentine's Day.
There are times still when I don't know what I'm doing here. You're
not here with me to share it, so everything feels useless. Two and a half years
without you...My God, when did it go by? I wish sometimes that I could be with
you, wherever that may be, but I know I can't. For some reason, someone saw fit
to take you from me and I can't change that.
There is only one thing I can do, and that is love you with all my
heart. It sounds ridiculous to everyone, but me, but there will never be anyone
else like you for me, so what else can I do? I will love you until the day I
die. I am forever 'as sure as the sun' of that.
Forever,
J"
Caitlin's voice
trailed off as she finished reading the letter. A tear was making its way down
her face while she sat in total devastation.
"Caitlin?
Caitlin, what's wrong?" Jess panicked when she saw her friend as she was.
"It's so
sad, Jess. I can feel his pain in his words. It's almost as if it were my
own." She pointed to the last phrase. "What do you suppose that
means? He put it in quotes. Do you think it's something he once said to
her?"
"I don't
know. Why?"
"Oh, who
knows. It just seems so familiar to me, as if I've heard someone say it before.
But I don't think I have. Maybe it's just the letter. I can almost hear the voice
saying those words to me."
"Caitlin, I
think you're going too far here," Jess said. She watched Caitlin read it
again, a dreamy look coming over her face. "It's a letter. You don't know
who wrote it and you've never met him. And it may not even be a him, you
know," a twinkle in her eye gave her away, "what's to say that 'J' is
a man?" She was only joking, of course. It was rather obvious from the
letter that the author was a man who was very much in love with his Brenda. But
they would never know him.
"Jess,"
Caitlin took a deep breath, "there is something about this letter and the
essence of the man who wrote this letter. I need to know who it was. And I know
it sounds nuts, but I think I might know him."
"Then, who
is he?"
"No, I
don't mean I know his name, but it's all very familiar to me, as I've met
someone like this."
"Caitlin-"
"No, wait,
Jess, for this to make sense, there's something you need to know about me
first, about who I was before you met me..."