CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
My job promises us a life of excitement that I can’t imagine sharing with anyone else. I promise to always take care of you. Meeting you changed me. I can’t be without you.
If you meet me, we will begin our life together. If you are not at the tree, then I’ll know you changed your mind, and I promise to respect that.
Forever my love, Henry
Their eyes met, just for a second, but it was enough. Her breath caught. A chill came over her that had nothing to do with the draft whispering under the window.
She swallowed hard, then dug through the rest of the box with haste.
“Wait,” she said. “This one’s addressed to Henry Bell at the La Crosse Hotel. The postmark is the day after Christmas.”
Nate leaned closer, brow furrowing. “La Crosse is only about four miles from here. The main train station was there back then. That must’ve been where he was staying for the newspaper story.”
“Maybe it took her a few days to get out of the house,” Hannah Leigh said, thinking aloud. “She’s asking why he didn’t show up in this letter.” She turned the letter over gently. “We’ve got to find Ruthie.”
“Winnie and Birdie didn’t recognize the name,” Nate said. “You’d think they’d know everyone within a hundred miles.”
“She could’ve changed her name, or left for a while.”
They sat in quiet awe for a moment, surrounded by the whispers of history. Then Nate exhaled, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Guess we just uncovered South Hill’s greatest love story.”
“Or its saddest,” she mumbled. She took pictures of what they’d found and put the mail back in the box.
“Maybe both.” He pressed his hands together. “Did you get pictures of everything?”
“Yes. We’ll put all of this back right where we found it, so we don’t end up in federal prison. That would be an even sadder story.”
“You got that right. I don’t think they serve Bringleton’s cocoa or pralines in jail.”
They repacked the boxes and carried them outside to Nate’s truck and drove in silence to the post office to return the boxes where they had found them. As Nate stepped out of the shed next to Hannah Leigh, a gust of wind barreled down the alley and slammed the door with a bang.
Hannah Leigh jumped. “Okay, that felt personal.”
Nate grinned. “You’re wound as tight as a box of new Christmas lights.” He locked the door.
She laughed a little too quickly. “Let’s hope we don’t short out.” Truth was, she could feel the tension buzzing under her skin. The kind that came from too much thinking and not enough breathing.
Then fate, or maybe it was karma that rolled in, quite literally.
A blow-up snowman broke free from a yard display and came barreling across the sidewalk like a jolly tumbleweed. Nate lunged, missed by an inch, and Hannah Leigh caught the full brunt of its inflatable cheer.
She yelped as the snowman’s puffy arms wrapped around her, sending her backward onto the damp ground with a soft thud. For a second, she sat there, tangled in white nylon and blinking up at the swirling flakes.
Nate raced over to help her up. “Are you okay?”
She brushed snow from her sleeve, half laughing herself. “Sure. Wrestling snowmen beside the maybe-haunted post office. Just another Tuesday in South Hill.”
“Wednesday,” he said, grinning.
Her eyes widened. “Then I’ve officially lost a day. That was one serious snowman roll.”
Amusement flickered in his brown eyes. When he offered his hand, she took it—and felt her pulse skip.
For a heartbeat, the rest of the world fell away as if the snow, the street, even the ridiculous snowman deflating behind them. He looked at her like he saw her, not the version she tried to hold together for everyone else. And in that quiet, unexpected way, she felt seen.
“What’s that look mean?” he asked, grinning.
“Nothing,” she blurted. “Like you just rescued me from a runaway snowman.”
“Yeah,” he said with a teasing tilt of his head. “That’s me. Your knight in Christmas flannel.”
“Maybe something doesn’t want us unraveling this mystery,” she said, smiling despite herself. His grin sent her insides tumbling again.
“Just one more reason not to give up,” he said.
As they stepped into the chill night, snow whispering underfoot, the air felt thick with untold stories. Ruthie’s, maybe the mayor’s, and perhaps her own. Each waiting for its turn to find a happy ending.
He drove her back to her car, and there wasn’t a word between them. “Here you go.”
She climbed out then leaned in, her elbows on the seat. “I enjoyed getting to know you, I mean who you are now, and seeing where and how you live. It was a really good day.”
“I’m looking forward to another one just like it tomorrow. Well, without the ghosts or runaway snowman.”
“Deal.” She watched him drive off, then tried to pull herself together to go back inside the Chamber of Commerce office to help Aunt Winnie with the challenge of the day.
Turned out, she’d missed the tinsel garland getting sucked into the copy machine and Aunt Winnie catching Birdie trying to fix the shorted snowflake-shaped lights with a butter knife.
Typical South Hill chaos. But somehow, they’d smoothed it all out and still made it home in time for a decent dinner before bedtime.
That night, long after she’d washed the dust from her hands and crawled into bed, Hannah Leigh couldn’t stop thinking about those letters, or about Nate.
The way he’d handled each fragile envelope with such care, like every word mattered. The way his laughter had filled that drafty old post office until it didn’t feel spooky anymore.
She told herself she’d come home to South Hill for a reset, not a rerun of her heart. But as she stared up at the ceiling, she couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe the past wasn’t the only thing waiting to be found here.