When the Tide Brought Him Back Chapter 06
In the morning, Elena did not call her editor. Instead, she went back to the drawer in the front room, to the tin box where she had found Rose’s photograph, and she looked more carefully. Under the ticket stub and the postcards was an envelope, addressed to Elena in Rose’s handwriting, with the words “Open when you are ready” written on the front. Elena’s hands shook as she opened it. Rose had written the letter in the last year of her life, in the same neat handwriting Elena remembered from childhood birthday cards. It was not a long letter, but every sentence in it was clear.
Rose wrote that Thomas had come to the blue house every year on the anniversary of the summer Elena left, not to ask for anything, but to ask how she was, and whether she was happy. She wrote that Thomas had never spoken bitterly about Elena, only quietly, as if she were a part of his life that he had learned to carry gently. She wrote that she had kept the photograph of Thomas on the harbour wall because she believed that some people, once known truly, were never really lost, even when distance and pride got in the way. And she wrote, most importantly, that Elena did not owe Seabrook her life, and she did not owe the city her life either. She owed herself an honest choice.
Elena read the letter three times, and then she did something she had not done in ten years: she took out the letter she had written to Thomas in her first year in the city, the one she had never sent, which she had found folded into the back of an old sketchbook when she unpacked. It was creased and faded, and it sounded young and uncertain, but it was honest. It said she missed him, that the city was loud and lonely, and that she did not know how to be both the person she wanted to become and the person she had been with him. Elena folded both letters together, put them in her pocket, and walked down to the yard, because she had finally understood that honesty was not something you waited to feel ready for. It was something you did, even with shaking hands.
Thomas was alone in the yard, mending a sail with slow, careful stitches. He looked up, and his face closed a little, the way it had the night before, as if he were bracing himself. Elena did not give him time to brace. “I didn’t take the job,” she said. “I haven’t called them back yet, but I’m not taking it. Not because of you, and not because of this town, but because I finally asked myself what I want, and a hotel chain is not the answer.” Thomas put down the sail and looked at her, really looked at her, and Elena held out the two letters. “This one is from Rose,” she said. “And this one is the letter I wrote you ten years ago and never sent. I was afraid then, and I’ve been afraid in different ways ever since. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
Thomas read Rose’s letter first, and then Elena’s letter, and Elena watched his face change, from guardedness to surprise, and then to something softer and more painful. When he finished, he was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “I thought you had forgotten me. I built a life around that thought, because it was easier than hoping.” Elena stepped closer and said, “I never forgot you. I just didn’t know how to come back without feeling like I had failed.” Thomas reached out and took her hand, and his hand was rough from work and warm from the sun, and it felt, absurdly and completely, like coming home. “Then let’s not do it the old way,” he said. “Let’s not decide everything at once. Let’s just be honest, one day at a time, and see what we build.” Elena nodded, and for the first time in ten years, she did not feel torn between two lives. She felt like she was standing, finally, in one.