I got your letter the other day. Did you imagine my face when I realized it was your suicide note? The ungodly sound struggling between my lips? The dog running in circles, whining until I started breathing right again?

It’s been more than ten years since you left. I probably don’t have the right to go to pieces like that anymore. But if that were really true, you wouldn’t have written to me at all. Did you do it just to have the last word, like always? Well, I won’t let you this time.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to lecture you. I’ve wasted enough hours trying. I won’t bore you with how I felt when you vanished like a ghost.

The robbery was the second story on the evening news. A three-car wreck out on County 27 beat you out. There was no blurry security picture. No empty-eyed police sketch. But I knew it was you. I slept with your old baseball bat by the bed for a month, I was so scared one of you would come round to see if I’d been saying things I shouldn’t. And I didn’t know how to get a gun.       

But no one ever came, not even the police. I guess you were smarter than them. At least, for a while.

Don’t fool yourself, though. People round here more than suspected. The old man at the butcher counter still narrows his wrinkled eyes at me whenever I so much as splurge on a strip steak. You can imagine the trouble I had at church the first time I showed up in a new dress.

The only thing I’m glad of is that you had the sense not to do it here, but two counties over. I think I would’ve had to move if it happened here. I suppose you planned it that way, thought you were being careful.

But if you were so damn careful, how come you had to write me that letter after all these years?  

You won’t believe me, but I understand why you never came back. I know you meant to. But first, you had to lay low, make sure you’d gotten away with it. And there was a pretty face passing through one small town. Another in the next. And another after her. It was so damn easy, wasn’t it? Much easier than having to look in my eyes, and see the reflection of what I knew.

But you did it wrong. Just like everything else. This time, it’s not forgetting I’m allergic to cashews or turning my favorite white skirt an ugly burnt pink in the laundry. You had all that money and you never did a goddamn thing. Died less than fifty miles from where you were born, and never did a goddamn thing.

That’s what I’ll never forgive you for. You should’ve flown away like we always talked about. Set foot on every continent. Picked your way across the world by throwing darts at a map. You had ten years. You should’ve done it all.  

You didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you. I’m a teller at the bank on First St. now. I took night classes. It got me out of the house in the evenings when I was still waiting for the sound of your boots outside the door. And I felt guilty too, like I should’ve known what you were thinking. Tried to talk you out of it. Told you we were doing alright. We had everything we needed.  

After you disappeared, I couldn’t walk into a bank without my stomach tumbling up my throat. At the interview, I almost passed out. My first day on the job, my manager was all concerned, making bad jokes, telling me not to be nervous. I’d cut my hair real short too, so I didn’t even have a ponytail to twist around the way I used to.

But I must’ve done alright, because they gave me a raise after six months. I’ve saved real careful since then. In another year, I’ll have enough for a vacation. Maybe in Rome. You always wanted to see those really ancient, crumbled ruins. I wish you’d gone and seen them on your own. Because I’m going without you and without your help, and I’m never going to think of you once the whole time I’m away.

I wrote so you would know, I don’t need what you left me. I already threw the key away, when I burned your letter. And I swear, I won’t so much as set foot in that bus station so long as I live, let alone go near that locker. It can sit there until they knock the building down to dust. I don’t care what it cost. It’s going to rot, worthless to both of us.

I don’t know which one of you actually pulled the trigger. I thought you would’ve said in your letter. Tried to explain it was your cousin, who always gave me the creeps, getting all hot-headed. But you didn’t say. It doesn’t matter.

I’ve tried, but I can’t forgive you like you asked. It’s funny, but if you’d never sent that letter, maybe I would have. Maybe if it had been heavy with foreign postmarks.

I’m not married. I don’t have kids. It’s just me and the dog, whose joints are a little stiff these days. The ridiculous, shaggy dog, who practically fit in my palm the day you brought her home for me.

– B. B. Garin