'A Letter a Week'

Copyright (pft!) 2003.

Disclaimer: I own this story and all the characters contained within. Nothing is to be displayed or used anywhere without my prior knowledge and consent. Thank you.

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A Letter a Week

"We don't have to do this now, you know."

Michael Bridges pulled his coat more tightly around him and stamped his feet in an effort to keep warm. His wife was trying another of the bundle of keys her grandmother had always carried in the door lock. She answered without looking at him, but he could hear the tears she was struggling to hold back in the way her voice trembled.

"I know, but…I want to," Kate Bridges said softly. "I need to feel close to her right now, Mike."

She turned the key until she heard a satisfying click and then pushed open the door. All at once, the scent she would forever associate with her childhood and loving hugs from Grandma enveloped her; a heady mix of lavender soap, freshly washed wool and Mint Imperials. She smiled.

"It's like she's still here," she said, almost to herself.

Michael said nothing but placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, giving her the strength to step over the threshold. They walked down the hall, Kate snapping on the table lamp as they passed, until finally they came to the closed living room door.

"Are you sure?" Michael asked, and Kate paused for a minute before nodding in affirmation. It had to be done; there was no reason to delay any further. Her husband sighed, and then reached for the door handle.

The room was just as she had left it that night; the night she had climbed the stairs to go to bed and never came down again. Elizabeth Reynolds had died in her sleep on the eve of her eighty-fifth birthday, a gentle smile on her face at the very end. It had been a peaceful end to a turbulent life and Kate was grateful for that.

"Do you want to start in here?" Kate asked Michael, picking up the bundle of magazines on the worn coffee table and holding them out to him. "Divide everything into piles. Things to be recycled, things to be donated to charity, things to be…thrown out, and things to keep. I'll go through them after you're done, make sure nothing's been missed. I'd like to keep the carriage clock, and the little china figurines she collected."

Michael took the magazines, a frown puckering his brow. "What are you going to do in the meantime?"

Kate looked down at her hands. "I thought I'd start in the bedroom."

"Kate! Do you think that's wise?" Michael asked.

"Yes," she said firmly. "It'll be the hardest room, so…I'd like to get it out of the way first." She tried to smile but it didn't quite work, and she ended up blinking back tears instead.

"Well, let me do it," Michael offered. "Please, Kate."

"No," she said. "Grandma wanted me to do it, and I will. Only…be here for me?"

Her voice broke on the last word and she began to sob in earnest, remembering the fateful telephone call that had shattered her life only eight days ago. Michael dropped the magazines and reached out for her, feeling more useless than he had ever felt in his life before. Holding her close, he stroked her back soothingly until the tremor of emotion running through her subsided and she was able to compose herself again.

"Thank you," she whispered, then tore herself out of his arms with new-found courage and made her way upstairs. Michael did not begin his sorry task until the very last stair had creaked under her weight, but even then he continued to listen out for her as she moved around. At the very first sign of upset, he was determined to take her away from the sadness that surrounded the empty house. He didn't know why she felt she had to put herself through this right now, but he also knew she wouldn't rest until it was done.

"Sometimes I think you're the only one who'll ever understand her, Beth," he said quietly to the silent room, then began to look through the papers at his feet.

Kate opened the bedroom door slowly and stepped inside. The curtains were still drawn and she moved carefully to the other side of the room to drag them open, blinking as daylight streamed in. It was a beautiful sunny day, which somehow seemed wrong to Kate; she wanted the dreariness of mist and rain to dull the almost unbearable pain inside her.

The bed was still unmade, and a dent remained in the pillow where her grandmother's head had rested. Kate stripped the sheets quickly and left them in a bundle outside the bedroom door, suppressing the tiny shudder than ran through her as she plumped the pillows unnecessarily. Moving to the dressing table, she picked up the bottle of perfume that sat there, covered in a thin layer of dust. Her grandmother had rarely worn it, only doing so on special family occasions like Kate's wedding three years before, and the bottle was still three-quarters full. Kate sprayed some onto her wrist to test whether it was still good, then placed it into one of the boxes she'd brought in from the car. She'd keep that, to remind her. Not that she would ever need reminding of the most remarkable women she'd ever known.

She picked up the only other item on the dressing table, a silver picture frame containing two photographs. The larger of the two was a faded colour photograph of Beth, Kate and Kate's mother, taken thirty years before. Beth was smiling down at her five year old granddaughter as she ate an impossibly large chocolate ice cream. Kate's mother was unsuccessfully trying to clean up the mess Kate had made of her face with a handkerchief, in anticipation of the posed photograph to come. Beth, however, had always preferred this one.

Kate touched the glass over her mother's face gently, taking in the lines around her eyes, the almost translucent skin, the hat that hid the fact her long brown hair had been falling out in clumps. She'd never known her father, who'd divorced her mother for his secretary before she was born, and her mother Emily had died less than a year after the picture was taken. Beth was the only family Kate had ever really known, until Michael.

The smaller photograph was in black and white, but Kate knew that the uniform the man wore was royal blue, the wings pinned to his tunic were silver, and his curly hair was blond just like her own. In 1940, while the world was at war, Jack Reynolds had smiled into the camera with love in his eyes and sent the picture to his new bride. He was not to know then that it would be the last time she would lay eyes on him.

Kate thought of all the times she'd seen her grandmother crying over the picture, clutching it to her chest as she cried out the pain she'd carried since the day the telegram came. Elizabeth had grown old and weary before her time, giving birth to her only child in a cold, damp shelter while bombs fell all around her. Jack had remained forever young, killed at the controls of his Spitfire as the Battle of Britain was fought and won in the skies.

She gazed at the photograph a moment longer, then wrapped the frame in a piece of tissue paper and placed it carefully next to the perfume. She checked the drawers of the dressing table were empty, which they were, and then moved onto the wardrobe.

She'd almost emptied the wardrobe and divided most of the clothes into two piles on the bed before she noticed the sheet. Kate had looked into the cupboard on many previous occasions and never had it been there before. She tugged at the corner and the white cotton slid easily off the pile of shoeboxes it was covering , landing in a heap at her feet.

Kate picked up the box on the top of the pile and examined it closely. She already had a fair idea of what it would contain; she knew her grandmother had kept all the letters her husband had written after he had joined up. Beth had told Kate the story of the letters many times, usually after some boy had broken her heart and her grandmother felt she needed to be reminded how pure and true love could be.

"The first time we said goodbye, just two days after we got married, Jack promised to write me a letter a week until we were together again. Well, your grandfather hated writing, I never even saw him write so much as a note before, so you can imagine how sceptical I was but sure enough, I got a letter from him every Friday. When you've found the person you'll love forever, keeping even the most impossible of promises is so much easier than you think it will be…I know you don't understand this now, Katherine, but one day you will. You will."

In a way, therefore, there was nothing unusual about what she'd discovered at all. But Kate hadn't realised there were so many letters to keep… there had always been one or two boxes in the bottom of the wardrobe, but now there seemed to be hundreds. She wondered where they had all come from, and why her grandmother had felt it necessary to keep them hidden. Kate had never even attempted to read this most private of correspondence before, but now she felt the first stirrings of curiosity in her heart.

"You wanted me to find these now, didn't you Grandma?" she said quietly, not sure whether she was talking to herself or not. Suddenly, memories of Beth seemed to crowd the room. Hesitating only a moment longer Kate opened the box, picked out the first letter, which was dated November 1939, and began to read.

It was two hours before Michael realised how silent things had become upstairs. Engrossed in sorting knitting patterns from women's magazines, it wasn't until the grandfather clock in the hall chimed six o'clock that he wondered what was keeping his wife so quiet. He climbed the stairs slowly, his knees stiff from hours spent kneeling down, calling out to Kate when he reached the top.

"I'm in the bedroom," she called back, and he made his way to the doorway.

She was sitting on the bed, an open shoebox next to her and more stacked neatly beside her. There was paper scattered all around her and as he moved closer, he could see that all the sheets were covered in the same spindly handwriting and began with the words 'My dearest Beth'. Some of the letters were yellowed with age, their edges frayed and ink smudged because of the number of times they'd been folded and refolded, but some looked relatively new.

"I didn't know Beth was so into correspondence," he said. "There must be thousands of letters here."

"She didn't write any of them. I doubt if she replied either. It might have proved rather difficult…look at this, Michael," Kate said, softly. "I can't quite believe it…can you?"

He took the pieces of paper she offered and began to read.

"You don't have to worry, my darling, Emily is with me now. She's no longer in pain…I have to tell you that our daughter is so beautiful! I know you wish you could join us both, but it's not your time…you have Katherine to care for yet. But I promise, we will see each other again, my love. One day we will meet and never be parted again. Nothing is more certain. Yours, as always, Jack." Michael paused.

"Kate, what is this?"

"Look at the date," she said quietly. "Look at the postmark on the envelope."

He did as she bid. "May 1973. Just after your mother died…" He looked again at the letter. "So your grandmother wrote herself letters and pretended they were from her husband. Kate, if it gave her comfort-"

"You don't understand," Kate interrupted. "That's not Grandma's writing. She couldn't write so neatly if she tried, she always laughed about it." She tossed him a bundle of letters from the oldest shoebox. "It's my grandfather's handwriting."

"What?" Michael exclaimed. He picked one envelope from the top of the pile, postmarked April 1940 and stamped with the words 'Passed by Censor', and compared it to the letter in his hand. He was forced to admit the resemblance was uncanny. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn the same person had written the letters…he looked at Kate in confusion.

"There's more after 1973," she said quietly. "Another thirty years worth, to be precise. I counted. And…I found this by the bed. She must have been reading it before she…before she…" she trailed off, turning away to look once more at the photograph she'd reverently replaced on the dressing table.

Apprehensively, he took the letter from his wife. He glanced at the postmark – 3 January 2003, the day of Elizabeth Reynolds' death – before he began to read aloud.

"My dearest Beth, the time has come at last. Soon you and I will be reunited after sixty three years apart – sixty three years too many – and the three of us will be together at last. I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you. Do not be afraid; there will be no pain, I promise. You know that I always keep my promises, wife; well, apart from one, as you know! 'Til death us do part…even death could not part us, my darling. I have always been with you where it matters most, in your heart."

He stopped once or twice, to check the validity of the postmark and to examine the crisp freshness of the paper, but finally and in total bewilderment, Michael completed the letter. The letter sent a week ago by a man who'd died more than sixty years before.

"Kate?" he asked, looking for confirmation of what he was seeing.

She shrugged, a small smile on her face. "A letter a week until they were together again, just like he promised."

"Even the most impossible of promises…I understand now, Grandma. Thank you."