entire world of her own creation. She shook her head, frustrated and confused and yet…
There was something else nagging at her, though, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was forgetting about something. Something important.
As much as she tried, she couldn’t seem to place it. The events of the past few days had left her feeling drained and jittery. She looked up. Dusk was beginning to spread across the sky and the temperature was falling. Near the trees, a mist was starting to roll in.
Looking away from Jo’s house—which was how she’d always refer to it, regardless of the state of mind it implied—Katie reached for the letter and examined it. The outer envelope was blank.
There was something frightening about the unopened letter, even though she wasn’t sure why. It might have been Alex’s expression as he’d handed it over… somehow she knew it was not only serious, but also important to him, and she wondered why he hadn’t told her anything about it.
She didn’t know, but it would be getting dark soon and she knew she was running out of time. Turning the envelope over, she lifted the seal. In the waning light, she ran her finger over the yellow legal paper before unfolding the pages. Finally, she began to read.
To the woman my husband loves,
If it seems odd for you to read these words, please believe me when I tell you that it feels just as odd to write them. Then again, nothing about this letter feels normal. There’s so much I want to say, so much I want to tell you, and when I first put pen to paper, everything was clear in my mind. Now, however, I find myself struggling and I’m not sure where to begin.
I can start by saying this: I’ve come to believe that in everyone’s life, there’s one undeniable moment of change, a set of circumstances that suddenly alters everything. For me, that moment was meeting Alex. Though I don’t know when or where you’re reading this, I know it means he loves you. It also means he wants to share his life with you, and if nothing else, we will always have that in common.
My name, as you probably know, is Carly, but for most of my life, my friends called me Jo…
Katie stopped reading and looked at the letter in her hands, unable to absorb its words. Taking a deep breath, she reread those words: for most of my life, my friends called me Jo…
She gripped the pages, feeling the memory she’d been struggling to retrieve come into focus at last. Suddenly, she was back in the master bedroom on the night of the fire. She felt the strain in her arms and back as she heaved the rocking chair through the window, felt the surge of panic as she wrapped Josh and Kristen in the comforter, only to hear the loud splintering sound behind her. With sudden clarity, she remembered whirling around and seeing the portrait hanging on the wall, the portrait of Alex’s wife. At the time, she’d been confused, her nerves short-circuiting in the hell of smoke and fear.
But she’d seen the face. Yes, she’d even taken a step closer to get a better look.
That looks a lot like Jo, she remembered thinking, even if her mind hadn’t been able to process it. But now, as she sat on the porch beneath a slowly darkening sky, she knew with certainty that she was wrong. Wrong about everything. She raised her eyes to gaze at Jo’s cottage again.
It looked like Jo, she suddenly realized, because it was Jo. Unbidden, she felt another memory float free, from the first morning that Jo had come over.
My friends call me Jo, she had said by way of introduction.
Oh, my God.
Katie paled.
…Jo…
She hadn’t imagined Jo, she suddenly knew. She hadn’t made her up.
Jo had been here, and she felt her throat begin to tighten. Not because she didn’t believe it, but because she suddenly understood that her friend Jo—her only real friend, her wise adviser, her supporter and confidante—would never come back.
They would never have coffee, they would never share another bottle of wine, they would never visit on the porch out front. She’d never hear the sound of Jo’s laughter or watch the way she arched her eyebrow. She would never hear Jo complain about having to do manual labor, and she began to cry, mourning the wonderful friend she’d never had the chance to meet in life.