Part 9: Ruby’s Letter
The letter came on a Thursday.
Walter found it tucked beneath the morning paper, the envelope pale and soft like snow left too long in the sun. The return address was scrawled in Ruby’s familiar hand—clear, steady, a little loopy in the way she always wrote Yukon like it was a fable.
He didn’t open it right away.
He brought it to the kitchen, made himself coffee, and stood by the sink as the kettle hissed. Outside, the wind pushed against the shutters, whispering the same cold song it had sung on the riverbank.
The coffee cooled before he took a sip.
Then he sat at the table, the one Huck used to nudge with his nose when he wanted scraps, and opened the envelope slowly, like peeling back a layer of time.
Inside was a single sheet.
Folded neatly. Scented faintly of cedar.
He unfolded it.
My dearest Walt,
The snow here is different. It doesn’t melt so much as it rests—quiet and certain, like it knows how to wait for spring. I think I understand it better now. I think I understand you better, too.
Arthur told me more stories about your father. Not the stories in uniform. The ones in wool shirts, with frost on his eyelashes and guilt in his chest. He was braver than I thought. Not because he stayed, but because he tried.
I walked to Huck’s tree today. Left a pine cone there. He would’ve liked it. The tracks we saw that morning—Walter, I swear to you, they were real. Not a fox. Not wind. It felt like Huck had come back, just to see us off.
I’ve spent these days writing. Remembering. Forgiving. Myself, mostly. For all the ways I held onto pain like it was a favor to someone long gone. But grief isn’t debt, Walt. It’s love that hasn’t finished speaking yet.
And now… I’m ready to come home.
Tell the swing to hold still. Tell the garden to wait a little longer. Tell the house I remember how it smells when you bake cornbread at noon.
I’ll be there by Sunday.
Love always,
Rubes
Walter read the letter three times.
By the second, the ink began to blur.
By the third, his hands had stopped trembling.
He set the letter down gently beside the coffee cup and looked around the kitchen. The counters felt less empty now. The silence less cruel.
He stood, crossed to the pantry, and pulled out the cornmeal. Measured it by memory. His fingers moved without instruction, guided by the echo of her voice calling from the porch, “Don’t burn the edges, Walt!”
By noon, the scent filled the house.
Warm. Honest. Home.
He went to the garden and straightened the tomato stakes. Pulled dead leaves from the rosemary bush. Brushed snow off the back porch swing with an old broom that had lost half its bristles.
Then he sat down.
Letter folded in his coat pocket.
Eyes closed.
Waiting.
And in the hush between wind and memory, he heard her voice.
Soft. Near.
“Tell the house I remember…”
He smiled.