The Woman in the Letters
Clara didn’t sleep.
She spent the night in the living room, the wooden box of letters beside her on the coffee table like a weight she couldn’t lift. The television played quietly in the background—some nature documentary about deep-sea creatures—but she wasn’t watching. Her eyes were fixed on the words she couldn’t unread.
Mae.
The name repeated in her head, over and over, until it became unfamiliar. Meaningless. But the words Thomas had written to her were anything but.
Clara picked up another letter, one of the older ones. The paper had yellowed, the ink slightly faded.
Mae,
Today I walked past the harbor and saw the shop with the green glass in the window. You always said the green ones were luckier. I wanted to go in and buy one for you, but I couldn’t. I made a promise. Still, you were with me.
Her stomach turned. The shop. The harbor. She remembered that place—Thomas had taken her there during a weekend trip years ago. He’d insisted on stopping in that sleepy coastal town, said he wanted to show her “a place that felt like memory.”
She’d thought it was his memory. Their memory. Now she wondered if she had only been walking through someone else’s story all along.
Clara rubbed her thumb along the corner of the letter. Her fingers trembled.
What kind of man wrote love letters to someone else after getting married?
She thought back to all the little things she’d never questioned. The way he’d stare too long at the sea. The way he sometimes drifted in conversation, eyes distant. The notebook he kept in his desk drawer that she never dared read. The way he said “always” like it held more than one meaning.
Clara stood and walked to the window. The early morning light poured in, cool and pale. The sea was still in the distance, calm as glass.
She took a shaky breath.
She needed to know who Mae was.
Not because she wanted to ruin the memory of her marriage—but because she didn’t want to live the rest of her life with only half the truth. If Thomas had loved someone else, she needed to understand why. And who that woman had been to him.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. A message from her friend Mia: “Thinking of you today. Call me if you need anything.”
Clara stared at the screen, then turned it face down.
What she needed wasn’t something anyone could give her.
She pulled out a duffel bag from the hall closet, her movements slow but steady. Jeans, sweaters, her toothbrush. She paused only once—to tuck the bundle of letters into the side pocket of the bag, close enough to feel.
Then she opened the door, the salty air rushing in.
Clara didn’t know what she’d find when she followed the trail of ink and paper.
But she knew where it began.
With Mae.
