The Unopened Letter

A Short Fiction, by C.J. Heck

The Unopened Letter
Short Fiction
by CJ Heck

The letter came over a week ago on Monday. Maggie had been absently wading through the morning's harvest of mail like she always did during lunch hour.  Predictably, it reaped the same bills, flyers, and grocery store ads. Then she spotted the familiar lazy masculine scrawl.

Maggie was stunned. After years of checking the mail, looking for a letter, there it was, a pearl among the cow pies.  She marveled at how the letter felt as she turned it over and over in her hands then wiped a tear threatening a slow getaway down her cheek.

An hour passed. Maggie still didn't know whether to open the letter or not, so she dropped it on the cherry table in the foyer. It sat there for nearly a week, mutely resting between the potted ivy and the dish that held her car keys, marking time, patiently awaiting her decision.

It remained unopened, but Maggie was relatively sure what it said. She just couldn't make herself open it and read the words. She knew the words would be angry, that was a given. She also knew the words probably demanded in yet one more way, her future and another chance.

Quite frankly, she loved her autonomy and she was flat out of more chances.

After the divorce, Maggie told Jonathan many times to get the help he needed. Abuse was abuse. It didn’t matter whether it was emotional, physical, psychological, sexual or verbal. God knows, he had been proficient in all of them –-and they all hurt.

She still loved him. That much was true. But it was also true, she loved herself and valued her safety even more --and now this letter. Well, it's too late, she argued. By moving away, she was finally free and that's the way it's going to stay --and now this damned letter!

Then again, what if he wrote to tell me he got help and he’s in therapy?

Maggie walked through the foyer a thousand times and each time, she glared at the letter. She even picked it up a time or two. Once she even held it close to her heart, as if it could tell her by sheer divination that the words didn't say what she knew they did.

She thought, maybe if don't read it, the words will change and say what I need to hear. But then, Jonathan was never into apologies or admissions of wrongdoing --forgiveness either, for that matter.

"Damn it to hell and back, what a sorrowful waste of a stamp!" Maggie shouted into the empty foyer, creating an eerie echo.

For a solid week, even Maggie's nights were plagued by the letter --open it, don't open it, open it, don't open it ...

By the following Wednesday, Maggie had had enough. She marched into the foyer and grabbed the offensive letter. First she folded it in half, then quartered it, and finally, stuffed it into the back pocket of her jeans.

Now it would be safe from misbehaving hands. With it out of sight, her mind wouldn't be tempted to grant her permission to open it.

Within a few hours, Maggie found herself unable to ignore it or throw it away. She wasn't sure how long she walked around with it in her back pocket, only that it began to singe her heart, blister her pride, and finally, scorch her self-control.

But it wasn't until she saw her jeans, letter and all, in the washer, that she was aware of what she'd done. Maggie watched them twisting and turning in the soapy water and suddenly she knew. She was cleansing and purging the past.

It was just as well. Now she would have some peace.

-*-

[from the book, “Bits and Pieces, Short Stories from a Writer’s Soul”, by C.J. Heck]

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
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