Chapter 7: Letters You Never Sent
Mae didn’t mean to keep writing to him.
It started as habit more than hope—scraps of paper pulled from notebooks, napkins stolen from the campus café, the backs of syllabi she didn’t bother to read. Whenever the ache built too high, she let it spill out in ink.
Dear Leo,
Today it rained and the river near campus overflowed. It made me think of you.
Dear Leo,
I learned a new word today: hiraeth. It means a homesickness for a home that no longer exists. I think it sounds like us.
She never mailed them.
She just folded each letter carefully, tucked it into a second shoebox she labeled in messy pen: If I ever get brave enough.
College was everything and nothing like she imagined.
Busy. Loud. Dazzling.
Lonely.
Her roommate, Elena, was nice enough—obsessed with astrology, scatterbrained, fiercely kind. She dragged Mae to parties and study groups and late-night pizza runs. She introduced her to a world Mae didn’t quite know how to belong to.
“You’re an old soul,” Elena said once, after Mae declined yet another frat party. “You live like you’re waiting for someone to come back.”
Mae just smiled, tucking another unsent letter deeper into the shoebox.
Maybe she was.
Meanwhile, life moved forward without permission.
She changed majors twice. Fell asleep in lectures. Worked part-time at the bookstore to cover textbooks and cheap coffee.
Some nights, she lay awake in her narrow dorm bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, wondering if Leo ever thought about the bridge. About the Paper Kingdom. About her.
She wondered if he still folded paper hearts.
Or if he had learned, as she was learning, that some things belong to a version of yourself you outgrow.
One afternoon, during her second year, Mae saw him—or thought she did.
It was ridiculous, really.
She was walking across campus in the first warm days of spring, sunlight sharp against the sidewalks, when she caught a glimpse: a boy with messy blond hair and a denim jacket, leaning against a tree.
Her heart stuttered.
She blinked.
It wasn’t him.
Of course it wasn’t.
Leo wasn’t here.
Leo was a thousand miles away, or maybe five, or maybe just far enough that no number could close the gap.
Mae sat down on the nearest bench and pulled out a scrap of paper from her bag.
Dear Leo,
I saw someone who looked like you today. I thought about what I would say if it had really been you. I realized I wouldn’t know how to start.
Leo wrote too, though he didn’t know if Mae would ever read a word of it.
When he finished his shifts, hands raw from lifting lumber or pouring concrete, he scribbled words onto diner napkins, the backs of receipts, the margins of old crossword puzzles.
Mae,
There’s a bridge in the town I’m working in. It’s not ours, but it creaks the same way.
Mae,
Sometimes I still fold paper hearts when I get bored. I don’t know what to do with them, so I leave them in library books and hope they find the right people.
He carried a photo of her—the one he had secretly snapped the summer before they drifted apart—tucked into his wallet. Her hair was messy, her nose crinkled mid-laugh. It was the only thing he kept when he lost everything else.
The years passed, soft and brutal.
Mae graduated early.
Leo moved from town to town, job to job.
Sometimes Mae met someone who made her laugh, who made the world tilt just slightly back toward the sun.
Sometimes Leo thought about settling down, staying still, building something permanent.
But every relationship, every new beginning, felt like building a house on the sand.
Not because they were broken, exactly.
But because a part of them was still standing on that broken bridge, too stubborn or too scared to walk away.
There were moments when it almost stopped hurting.
Moments when Mae was too busy studying, too busy laughing at something Elena said, too busy living to remember what she had lost.
Moments when Leo could convince himself he had outgrown that small town, that crooked smile, that summer filled with paper hearts.
But the thing about rivers is—they carve deep, permanent paths, even when the surface looks calm.
And some people don’t just pass through your life.
They leave fingerprints on your soul.
One night, after too many cups of bad dorm coffee and a sudden thunderstorm that rattled the windows, Mae finally broke.
She pulled out the shoebox, dug through the messy stack of letters.
She chose one at random, unfolded it.
Dear Leo,
Do you think we were brave? Or just kids who didn’t know better?
Either way, I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re laughing somewhere.
I hope you still believe in fireflies.
She pressed the letter to her chest.
Cried.
Not because she regretted loving him.
But because she hadn’t known how to stop.
That summer, Mae came back to Willow Creek.
Not because she thought he would be there.
Not because she was chasing ghosts.
But because some roots are too stubborn to be ripped out completely.
The town was smaller than she remembered. The bakery had new owners. The library smelled the same. The river still sang its endless song.
Mae wandered down the familiar dirt path one afternoon, heart thudding.
The bridge was still there—patched clumsily with new wood, half-wild with ivy—but standing.
She stepped onto it, feeling it sway gently beneath her feet.
And for the first time in years, she didn’t feel like she was trespassing in her own memories.
She just felt… home.
Mae sat down on the middle plank, legs swinging.
From her pocket, she pulled out a folded paper heart.
It wasn’t old. It wasn’t one of Leo’s.
It was new.
Written in her own steady hand.
Some people are rivers. You don’t forget rivers.
She tucked it between two planks, where it could drift or stay or be found by some other wandering heart.
Then she closed her eyes.
Let the wind tug at her hair.
Let the water carry away the ache.
Somewhere far away, Leo sat on the porch of a house he was helping rebuild, a battered paper heart tucked into the pages of a worn-out book.
He smiled without knowing why.
Some bonds don’t need bridges.
Some bonds are rivers.
Always flowing. Always finding their way back.
Even if they never arrive at the same shore again.
You must be logged in to post a comment.