The Moment of Letting Go - J. A. Redmerski Page 0,141

cold in my tracks, the box getting heavy in my arms. “If you won’t open it, I will.”

The box falls against the floor in front of me with a thud. I turn around briskly to face her.

“No you won’t. And neither will I.”

“Sienna, this is stupid—”

“I don’t care!” I shout, but then compose myself and say more calmly, “There’s only one reason why I would just randomly get a letter from Kendra one day. Out of the blue. Just one week after the day Luke was going to jump in Norway.” I step up closer to her and point my index finger upward. “One reason. And you know it.”

I start to head back to my room for another box, but Paige stops me again.

“Then why keep it?” she asks. “You refuse to open it to find out the truth. You say you don’t want to know, but you won’t get rid of the letter. You’re holding on to it for something, Sienna, and it ain’t for sentimental value.”

I sigh.

“I’m holding on to it because I’m not ready.”

She steps up beside me and lays her head on my shoulder. She smells like fruity perfume and chlorine.

“You can never be ready to face something like that,” she says, “but by not opening it, you’ll never find closure—it’ll destroy you either way.”

I say nothing and hold my tears deep inside.

Paige hugs me and then picks her purse up from the chair nearby.

“I have to go to work,” she says. “Think about Friday night, OK? I miss my best friend.”

I look at her without eye contact and nod.

Once Paige leaves, I go back into my room and open my desk drawer. Kendra’s letter stares back at me next to some pens and cute stationery. The date stamp reads July. “It’s addressed simply to “c/o Sienna” because she probably never knew or remembered my last name. And the address reads “Harrington Planners.” It probably wasn’t too difficult to get the address of where I worked.

I stand here for ten minutes, unmoving, staring down at the letter, my tear-filled eyes following the pretty cursive flow of Kendra’s handwriting, the curvy tail of the “K” in her name, the fancy swirl of the “S” in mine, and I think about opening it again. For a while it takes everything in me not to. I have to know, I say to myself, the same thing I’ve said to myself since the day I got it. The day the world stopped spinning on its axis.

My heart died that day. It just died. I wondered how I was still able to breathe as I left the office.

But the more I stare at it, the more I realize that I already know. Why would Kendra write to me at all? Why would she write instead of Luke? Why would she go out of her way to track down my address just to send me a letter? And why would she send a handwritten letter anyway? She could have just as easily sent an email through the company website.

Because handwritten letters are more personal.

You don’t break up with someone in an email or a text message. And you sure as hell don’t tell someone in an email or a text message that someone they cared deeply for died.

I already know what’s inside that envelope, but I’m not ready for the finality. Maybe a part of me wants to hold on to the lie for as long as I can. Sometimes lies are more comforting than the truth.

THIRTY-THREE

Sienna

I spend the next few days trying to put Luke out of my mind. But that letter from Kendra haunts me. I can’t sleep at night, especially with it being in my room. I think about him every second of every day, and it’s only getting worse—the feelings I carry, the fear of him being gone forever, weighing me down.

Every day I come home from work and find myself sitting on the sofa for hours with the television off, listening to the sound of the neighbors walking across the floor in the upstairs apartment.

I expect tonight to be no different, but the second I close my apartment door and slide the chain over, I burst into sobs. Sitting against the front door with my back pressed against it and my legs drawn up, bent at the knees, I drag my hands through the top of my hair and sniffle back my tears. Minutes pass—it feels like an hour—and I’m still sitting on the floor in the