Chapter Twenty: A Delayed Correspondence

It was a bright, sunny day in early December when Leah Williams went out to get her mail. There had been a light snowfall last night, and she could still see the foot prints her children had made in the new snow as they headed off for school earlier that morning. The frosty air smelled crisp and clear, it was turning into a beautiful day. Leah quickly retrieved her mail from the mailbox by her door and hurried into her house.

She quickly cycled through the different envelopes. “Bills, junk, bills, more bills,” she said to herself as she reviewed each piece of mail and sorted them into piles on her kitchen countertop. Her gaze settled upon the last letter, a small, plain envelope addressed to her maiden name from someone she couldn’t remember at first.

“Andrew Roberts,” she repeated the name to herself as she opened the letter. Her questions were answered within the first line of the short letter.

Leah Morgan,

You may not remember me, but we were in French together back in high school. I know it’s taken me a while to ask this, but recently it’s been something that has been bothering me. Do you remember signing my high school yearbook? You wrote “Dear Andrew, Thanks for making French class such a blast. Your jokes always made me laugh!” I almost never even spoke during French class, much less made jokes. We were never even close in high school. I guess I just wanted to know what you meant, or if you even meant anything by it. I hope life has been treating you well since graduation.

Andrew Roberts

Leah sighed deeply. She had completely forgotten about Andrew and what she had written in his yearbook so long ago. The long-forgotten emotions and motives were beginning to come to the forefront of her memory. For a minute, she began to contemplate writing Andrew back, wondering how to give new meaning to newly-remembered eighteen year old words. Then, the phone rang. Leah, waited for two rings before she picked it up.

“Hey darling, how’s everything going at home?” Her husband’s voice came through the line, and any thoughts of Andrew were put aside.

“Oh, things are going well. I got a letter from someone I used to know in high school.”

“Oh? How are they doing?”

“It sounds like he’s doing fine. So what’s up, honey?”

“Fred from the firm won this radio contest for four free cruise tickets, and he and Maryanne offered the other two to us! Does that sound good?”

“A cruise? Oh, I’ve always wanted to take one! We’ll send the kids to your mother’s place. When will it be?”

“We’ll have to check our schedules and find a time that works for all of us, but Fred has two weeks to notify the station of when we’ll be going. Hey, I’ve got to get back to work, but we’ll discuss this later when I get home. I love you, darling!”

“I love you too, sweetie!”

Still feeling the excitement of a free cruise, Leah looked again at Andrew’s letter. She was too excited to respond now, she couldn’t recall what she could have been feeling that day. She’d answer it later, when she could organize her thoughts. Besides, he’d waited eighteen years. What was another day or so?

Still in a state of glee, Leah remembered that she needed to pick up a pound of hamburger for dinner that night. She put on her coat and grabbed her car keys from the desk in the living room, and then as an afterthought, grabbed Andrew’s letter and placed it in a drawer in the desk. Leah Williams then left the house for the grocery, her thoughts still revolving around the sun and the open water and tropical weather.