Part 9 – “What He Didn’t Know”
It was a Thursday morning when the knock came.
Three soft taps, then quiet.
Leonard opened the door, expecting the mailman or Rose from across the street. Instead, he found a man in his late seventies—tall, thin, weathered, with watery blue eyes and a baseball cap that read Scripps College Alumni in faded thread.
“Leonard Price?” the man asked.
Leonard hesitated. “Yes?”
“I’m Cal Rosen. I… I knew your wife. Marilyn.”
Leonard felt the breath shift in his chest. “From when?”
“Long ago. Before she met you. We were twenty. She was a junior, I was a senior. English majors.” Cal smiled faintly. “She could out-write all of us.”
Leonard stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”
They sat in the living room. Shasta padded over cautiously, sniffed Cal’s knee, then retreated beneath Leonard’s chair.
“I heard the podcast,” Cal said. “I wasn’t even looking for it. My granddaughter played it in the car. I recognized the name. Her voice, even through your stories. That soft mischief.”
Leonard’s fingers curled around the rim of his coffee cup.
Cal set a small envelope on the table. “I have something I think she meant to give you. But I wasn’t sure it was my place.”
Leonard didn’t move to take it. Not yet.
“We were never anything serious,” Cal said, gently. “Just young. Confused. I broke it off when I left for New York. She wrote me one more letter afterward. Said she was done chasing ghosts and ready to live a real life. Said she’d met someone who saw her clearly.”
Leonard blinked hard.
“That was you,” Cal added. “I think you were her home.”
Silence pressed in between them. Not heavy. Just full.
“I didn’t come to stir anything up,” Cal said. “I just… when I saw your face, heard what you’d been through—I felt like maybe this belonged with you now.”
Leonard picked up the envelope.
Inside was a single-page letter, yellowed but neat. Folded carefully.
Dear Cal,
I hope life’s treated you kindly. I hope you found what you were looking for in all those skyscrapers and smoky bars.
As for me—there’s a man named Leonard Price. He makes the best bad coffee I’ve ever had. He reads the obits before the comics. He folds laundry the moment it’s dry. And he looks at me like I’m still unfolding.
If you ever wonder how I turned out, here’s your answer: I loved, and I was loved well.
Goodbye for real this time,
—Marilyn
Leonard stared at the page.
A long breath left his body, like something uncoiling that had been tight for too many years.
“I didn’t know she wrote to you,” he said.
“She probably didn’t want you to,” Cal replied. “She didn’t hold on to many ghosts. She moved forward.”
Leonard nodded.
Shasta stirred, stretching out and resting her head on his foot.
Cal stood. “I should go.”
“Wait.”
Leonard rose, walked to a small bookshelf, and pulled down a framed photo—the one from the mystery letter in Part 8. Marilyn and a dog named Penny on a lakeside bench.
He handed it to Cal.
“She kept pieces of herself tucked in quiet places,” Leonard said. “I’m still finding them.”
Cal studied the photo. “She was always doing that. Leaving little truths behind.”
They shook hands at the door.
“She was lucky,” Cal said.
“I was luckier,” Leonard replied.
After he left, Leonard sat on the porch, letter in hand, Shasta curled against his leg.
He thought about all the versions of Marilyn the world had known. The girl with the dog. The student in love with language. The wife who remembered to fold his socks in pairs. The widow’s hand reaching across time to send him a trembling puppy in a taped-up box.
He hadn’t known everything about her. Maybe no one ever truly does.
But he’d known the best part: the part that stayed.
And that was enough.
He folded the letter, slid it into his pocket, and scratched Shasta gently behind the ears.
“We’re still learning, huh?” he whispered.
Her tail tapped twice in agreement.