The letter

As the leaves turned golden, Edward particularly remembered her long ginger hair gleaming in the sun and melancholy welled up inside him.

Every year, Christmas came and went in silence, loneliness sending him to hide in bed until the season ended.

New Year fireworks would explode around the neighbourhood, jolting Edward awake. Watching the rockets, he remembered a small, screeching face burrowed into his jacket.

Every January, Edward would resolve anew to make this year matter. He would open the cream cartridge writing pad, used only for official or special letters, warming the ink pen on his waistcoat.

His eyesight was declining, and his fingers had grown more gnarled with arthritis over the years. He feared that there would come a day when his fingers would fail to grip the pen.

Yet, a surge of hope rose as memories floated across his tired mind. He remembered her small hand in his, strolling across a meadow; he remembered trusting eyes as he encouraged her to swim; he remembered her delight at digging up a misshaped potato.

He remembered.

He carefully formed the first words.

‘Dear Shelley,

I hope you are well.’

Edward paused. The empty page waited for the experiences of so many years, the good and the bad; news of the living, news of the dead.

‘Another year gone and I haven’t heard from you.’

Edward paused. Did that sound accusatory? Shelley had never accepted criticism. Forty years of silence told him that. He remembered her cold blue eyes and ugly cropped hair in their last encounter. Each year, he resolved to write, to apologise for his attitude, but it was so difficult to find the words.

‘I would dearly love to know how you are.’

Edward reread the words. Was that the right tone? Was it true? What if she was unhappy, in a terrible relationship, on drugs or in prison? Any of those seemed possible. What could he do about that? Yet, he had to try.

His hand shook with emotion as he wrote.

‘I hope, with all my heart, that you are well and happy.

With much love,

Dad’

Edward reread the letter, as he did every year. This year, the same as for the last ten years, just his name decorated the page.

He and his wife had spent years wondering, hoping, grieving for their missing daughter. Once his wife was dead, he was left to mourn alone. Every new year, he resolved to reconcile. Would Shelley understand when she saw the single signature? Would she care? Would she finally come home?

Edward held the letter, memories of red hair, blue eyes, a potato, laughter, and a slammed door filling his head. He folded the page carefully and placed it in an envelope.

He wrote the word Shelley with reverence, pleased with how beautiful it looked, despite his tremor. Shuffling to the mantelpiece, he added the envelope to the others sitting waiting for her, with no address to send them to.