17. George
Chapter Seventeen
George
a few weeks ago
Mail call is always a mess.
Guys crowd around the folding table pretending they don't care.
That's the game we like to play around here. We crack jokes, we shove each other around, complain about the heat, the food, the fact that Jackson has apparently been waiting three weeks for a package his wife swears she sent. Anything we can do to act like this isn’t serious for us.
Nobody says what everyone is really thinking or feeling. ‘Please let there be something with my name on it.’
The mail clerk works through the stack in the same bored voice he uses every time. “Martinez.” A cheer goes up when a box gets lifted from under the table.
“About damn time,” Martinez says.
“Your mom sent enough for everybody?”
“Of course she did. My mom likes me. Can't relate, huh?” Someone tells him to go fuck himself.
I stay against the wall, my arms folded, and I’m just watching and laughing at them.
I'm not expecting anything… I haven't been for a while.
Which is way easier than hoping. Or maybe I've just gotten better at pretending it is.
The clerk calls another name. Then another.
I look toward the far side of the base. Mack said he needed me later to go over tomorrow's movement plan. I should probably find him before—
“Hale.”
I don't move. The clerk looks down at the envelope and repeats.
This time, saying my full name, “Sergeant George Hale”.
My head turns. For half a second, nobody says anything.
I can feel Jackson glance at me. I push off the wall and walk over there.
It feels way longer than it is. The clerk holds out a white envelope.
This one is not from Monica. I know that before I even touch it. The handwriting is wrong. It looks nothing like hers. My stomach drops a little at the sight of it. The envelope is addressed directly to me, and when I turn it over, it’s the return address that stops me.
It’s my apartment’s address.
The name above it is one I've never seen before.
Mia Matthews
Something cold moves through my chest. My first thought is that something happened to Monica. It has to be. Why else would a stranger at that address be writing to me? I shove the envelope into my pocket and start walking outside.
Mack watches me. “You’re not opening it?”
“Later.” He studies my face for a second. Then nods without asking again.
That's why I like him.
I make it through the next hours without opening it.
There's work to do, gear to check, soldiers to reassign. I don’t have time for a letter. I sit in my office trying to sort some documents, and somehow I find myself in the middle of a conversation with Mack, and that’s when he notices that I’m distracted. “You planning on joining us today?”
I look up and see him standing across from me with one hand braced against the table. “What?”
“Exactly.”
“I'm fine.”
“I didn't ask that.”
I look back at the papers between us. He waits. I hate when he does that. “What?”
His eyes drop briefly to my pocket. The corner of the envelope is barely visible. “Nothing, Sergeant.”
I pull the envelope out and set it on the table. Mack looks at it, then at me. “Is that from Monica?”
“No.”
That gets his attention. “Then who?”
“Don't know.”
He reads the return address upside down, and his face changes a little. “Okay, so are you opening it?”
“Everybody keeps asking me that.”
“Probably because carrying unopened mail around like an explosive device is weird. Even for you.”
I slide it back into my pocket. “I'll deal with it…later”
Mack watches me for another second, then straightens. “You do you.”
By the time I finally get a few minutes alone, the envelope has gone soft at the corners from being in my pocket all day.
I sit on the edge of my bunk.
The tent is quieter than usual. Not completely silent, there’s always someone snoring two rows over, or a generator rattling outside, or boots hitting packed ground somewhere behind us. But tonight, it’s quiet enough for me to sit still for a while.
I turn the envelope over.
Mia Matthews
I slide my thumb under the flap. There are two letters inside. One is folded, in handwriting I don't recognize. Another in handwriting I do. My whole body goes completely still. Monica.
I almost reach for hers first, but instead I unfold the other page.
George,
You don't know me. My name is Mia, and I'm currently living in the loft apartment you shared with Monica.
I stop and read it again.
Currently living in the loft.
I found several letters from you after I moved in.
At first, I set them aside because they weren't mine. I contacted Monica and asked what she wanted me to do with them. She told me they could be discarded.
My jaw locks. Discarded, huh? So everything I’ve been writing to her she wants to be just… discarded.
Over twenty-four letters reduced to trash. Nice, Monica, nice.
I keep reading.
I am sorry to tell you that I didn't discard them. I kept them. And yesterday, I opened them.
Everything in me stops.
I read the sentence again. Then a third time. She opened my letters? All of them? My grip tightens on the page.
“What the actual fuck?”
You have every right to be angry about that. I know it was wrong. I won't pretend it wasn't.
I stare at the line.
“Damn right I'm angry about it.”
A stranger read my letters. Not one, not two, several. Maybe all of them. Every stupid thing I wrote because I thought only Monica would see it. Every apology. Every bad joke. Every time I admitted I was scared.
Every— I stop.
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. I feel exposed. More exposed than I have any right to feel sitting in a tent surrounded by men who have seen me bleeding. I almost fold the page. Almost stop. Then I see Monica's handwriting beside me, so I keep reading.
The reason I'm writing now is because a letter from Monica arrived here after being returned by the postal service. It was addressed to you. It was marked “return to sender” and “undeliverable.”
My eyes move to the second page. So that’s Monica's letter.
I tried to contact Monica again. She did not respond. I opened that letter too.
Something inside me sinks. I let out one short, humorless laugh. “Of course you did.”
But there's no real anger behind that one. I mean, if I were to find a stack of mail, I would probably—no, don’t start making excuses for a person you don’t even know.
She ended the relationship in that letter. I am enclosing it because I think you deserve to have the words that were meant for you, even if they are painful.
My eyes stop moving.
The noise around me disappears. I can’t hear the generator anymore, even though I know it’s still running. The sound of someone snoring in the background also disappears. There are still voices outside. But for a second, I can't hear any of it.
She ended the relationship.
I am so sorry you are finding out this way.
I don't know what happened between you and Monica. I only know what I read, and I know that doesn't give me the whole story.
But I also know you kept writing because you did not know she had left.
I didn't think it was right to keep this from you.
I am enclosing Monica's returned letter. I still have the letters you sent to her. I didn't want to send them anywhere without knowing what you wanted done with them.
I hope you are safe.
I'm sorry.
—Mia
My hand starts shaking, enough that the paper moves.
I sit there and read the last two lines again.
I just found out my fiancé broke up with me through a stranger’s letter, and those two lines are the ones that get me.
Maybe because she doesn't know me. Maybe because she read enough to know where I am, and still didn’t pretend to understand anything else.
Maybe because I haven't heard anyone say they hope I'm safe in a long time.
I fold her letter, set it beside me, and pick up Monica's. I know that this stranger just told me the truth without even reading her letter. I've known for weeks.
Silence is a language too, you know.
Monica has been speaking it for months. Still, my hands don't want to unfold the page. Because that would make all of this shit real. And real is painful.
George,
I've rewritten this more times than I want to admit, and every version ends in the same place.
I can't do this anymore.
I stop reading…
That's as far as I get.
I fold the page, put it inside the envelope, stand, and walk outside. The night air is cooler, but not cool enough to cool me down right now. I keep walking until the lights behind me thin out. Then I stop beside a concrete barrier and put both hands on it.
I breathe in once, then twice. But nothing helps.
I knew she would end things. That's the worst part.
Some stupid piece of me kept writing anyway.
Over twenty-four letters. Like persistence could turn silence into something else.
Like, if I kept telling her about dogs, dust storms, and shitty coffee, eventually she would remember how to answer me.
I laugh once, and it sounds just wrong. I press both hands against the concrete. She told the stranger in our apartment to throw them away. That lands harder than I expect. Not the breakup, but the indifference... Discard them.
I close my eyes.
“Hale?”
I don't turn around. “Go away, Mack.”
He comes closer. “Sure.” I hear him stop a few feet behind me.
He doesn't leave. I hate him for that too.
For a while, neither of us says anything.
Then I say it… “She left.” The words come out flat.
Mack stays quiet. “I got a letter.” Still nothing.
“Not from her.” That makes him shift. I look down at the page in my hand. “Some woman's living in the apartment.”
Mack takes that in. “Okay.”
“She found my letters, and she opened them.”
His eyebrows go up.
“Yeah.”
“That's…”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
I look at Monica's folded letter. “She sent me this.”
Mack's face changes. He understands enough. “Shit.” He comes to stand beside me. Doesn't touch me. Doesn't tell me it'll be okay. Good. I would probably beat the fuck out of him.
“You read it?”