To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Open If, Again

The night before the scan, I sat on the back steps with a flashlight and a pen.

The broken trellis had been stacked against the garage by then, in a heap of white slats and rose canes.

Dad had promised a new one by the wedding.

Fraser came out of the kitchen with two mugs of tea and sat down beside me on the step.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I'm thinking."

"Is it a good thinking or a bad thinking?"

"I want to see the envelope."

His whole body went still.

"I told you I'm keeping that until you're eighty."

"I know. I'm not going to take it. I want you to open it, now, with me, tonight."

"Pink."

"Please."

He put his tea down on the step.

"Why?"

"Because it's been in your pocket for eight months, and every time you touch your chest I see you check it's still there."

He looked embarrassed.

"I do not."

"You do it when you think I'm asleep."

He sighed, and took off his flannel, and unbuttoned the pocket.

The envelope had gone soft at the corners from being carried.

OPEN IF was smeared in one place, where a thumb had rubbed it.

"If I read it now, that makes it true," he said.

"If you don't, it stays something you carry around and don't say."

"That's the same thing."

"It isn't. I wrote it terrified, in November, at a kitchen table. I want to read it as a woman who's still here."

He turned the envelope over in his big, scarred hands.

Then he tore the flap, very gently, and slid out three folded pages.

We read them under the flashlight, with our shoulders pressed together.

I had forgotten how much I had written.

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