Part 5 – Letters That Never Left
For a second, Ethan thought he had misheard her.
The word “drawer” clanged against everything he thought he knew about his father, who had never been good with long conversations unless there was a mailbox involved.
He glanced past Maria toward the darkened living room, where the old wooden sideboard stood against the wall like it was still waiting for someone to drop their keys on it.
“Show me,” he said, his voice lower than he meant.
Maria nodded and stepped inside, wiping her shoes carefully on the mat the way she had probably been taught since childhood.
Buddy trotted in between them, nails clicking on the floor, as if he already knew exactly where they were going.
The living room smelled faintly of dust and coffee, with another softer scent underneath that Ethan recognized as his father’s soap.
Sunlight filtered through the crooked curtains, laying pale stripes across the worn carpet and the sagging couch.
The sideboard stood to the left of the window, its surface cluttered with old photographs, a cracked ceramic bowl, and a set of keys that had nowhere to go.
Maria stopped in front of it and touched the handle of the middle drawer.
“I promise I didn’t open any envelopes,” she said, eyes flicking up to meet his.
“I just… I saw your name on the front of one when I was picking up a stack that fell, and then I realized there were more.”
She pulled the drawer open slowly, and Ethan’s breath caught.
Inside, bundled together with rubber bands that had started to dry and crack, were dozens of envelopes.
Some were white, some yellowed at the edges, all addressed in the same familiar, slanted handwriting: “Ethan Carter” followed by apartment numbers he recognized and some he didn’t.
None of them had stamps.
The upper right corners were all empty, just blank squares where a tiny printed picture should have been.
They might as well have been small, paper-thin ghosts waiting for a door that never opened.
He reached in and lifted one bundle, feeling the slight give of the paper under his fingers.
The top envelope had his very first city apartment address on it, the one bedroom above a noisy street that he had loved and hated in equal measure.
On the back, in smaller letters, was his father’s name and this house’s address, the return path that had never been used.
“Why didn’t he mail them?” Ethan asked, though he knew Maria couldn’t possibly have the answer he wanted.
Maria shifted her backpack strap, looking uncomfortable and older than her sixteen years for a moment.
“He said once that every time he finished one, he thought, ‘I’ll wait until I write a better one,’” she said quietly. “And then he’d start another instead.”
Ethan slid his thumb under the unsealed flap of the first envelope.
The paper inside crackled softly as he pulled it free, unfolding it with more care than he had given any document in years.
Buddy sat at his feet, head tilted, eyes flicking between Ethan’s face and the page as if waiting for some kind of verdict.
“Dear Ethan,” the first line read, the letters darker and surer than the ones on the bloodstained page he had seen on his phone.
“If you’re reading this, it means I finally found the courage to put a stamp on one of these things.”
Ethan exhaled, a short, shaky breath, and kept going even though his eyes already stung.
His father wrote about the first week after Ethan moved away, about how quiet the house had felt without the thump of his shoes on the stairs.
He wrote about trying to figure out how to send a message on his old flip phone and giving up after pressing the wrong button three times.
He described walking his route and seeing other kids’ parents proudly talk about their children leaving for big opportunities, and how he realized he didn’t know how to do that out loud without sounding like he was bragging.
“In case I forgot to say it right,” one line read, “I am proud of you, even if I didn’t understand why you wanted to leave so fast.”
The next sentence had been scratched out, a dark line across whatever his father had decided he shouldn’t say.
Underneath it, in smaller handwriting, were the words, “I’m sorry I made you feel like you were wrong for wanting more.”
Ethan put the letter down before his hands crumpled it.
He chose another envelope from deeper in the stack, this one with a later address, from a nicer building he’d moved into after a promotion.
The date at the top of the page was from two years ago, a time he remembered mostly in late nights and takeout containers and an ache between his shoulder blades that never really went away.
“Dear Ethan,” this one began, the lines a little less steady.
“I saw on the holiday card that your company sent that you’re moving up. I hope they know they’re lucky to have you, even if I still don’t really understand what you do.”
There was a small joke in the next line about “all those computers,” and Ethan could hear his father’s voice in his head, half teasing, half sincere.
“You probably think I don’t want to bother you,” the letter continued, “and sometimes that’s true.
I don’t want to be one more thing on your long list of things that are ‘urgent’ in your phone.
But sometimes I wish I could call and say, ‘How was your day?’ without worrying I’m stealing time you don’t have.”
He felt Maria’s eyes on him and realized his own were blurring the ink.
Carefully, he placed the second letter on the table beside the first, the two sets of words lying side by side like a conversation that had never been spoken.
He picked up a third envelope, this one with no date at the top at all, only the words “I don’t know where to start.”
This letter was messier, with sentences crossed out and started again.
Frank wrote about the fight they had at the front door, about how he had replayed Ethan’s words over and over until he started wondering if they were true.
He admitted that when Ethan was younger, he had sometimes chosen to work extra shifts instead of going to school events because he was afraid of falling behind on his route.
“I thought if I kept the mail on time, I was doing my job as a father too,” one line read.
“I told myself you’d understand when you got older, but I never checked if that happened.
By the time I realized I might have been wrong, you were already building a life somewhere else, and I didn’t know how to knock on that door without bringing all my mistakes with me.”
A chair scraped softly behind him, and Ethan realized Mrs. Henson had come in and sat down quietly.
She folded her hands in her lap, watching him with the kind of gentle sadness that belonged to someone who had seen their own share of regrets.
“He’d sit here at that table, you know,” she said. “Sometimes I’d see him through the window, just staring at a blank page for the longest time before he wrote anything.”
Maria nodded, leaning against the doorway.
“He said writing a letter was easier than calling because if he said the wrong thing, he could rip it up and start over,” she added.
“But then he never wanted to send the version that wasn’t perfect.”
Ethan let out a short, humorless laugh.
“That sounds like him,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Always worrying about getting the little things right and missing the big ones because of it.”
His fingers moved almost on their own now, searching through the envelopes until they found one that was different.
The paper was thinner, the edges more worn, as if it had been handled more often than the others.
On the front, his name was written a little larger, and the ink had bled slightly where the pen had pressed too hard.
When he unfolded it, he saw there were only a few lines.
“Dear Ethan,” it began, like all the others.
“I’ve been carrying this one in my jacket pocket for months, thinking today would be the day I finally walk to the mailbox.”
The next sentence made him sit down.
“There’s something about your childhood I never told you the truth about, and I think it’s the root of why you left as angry as you did.”
The line after that trailed off, ending mid-word, the rest of the page empty.
At the bottom corner, a faint crease suggested that another sheet might once have been attached and removed.
He turned the letter over, searching for more writing, but there was nothing.
Just his father’s name at the bottom, half finished, the “F” started and then scratched away as if he had changed his mind halfway through signing it.
A quiet roar filled Ethan’s ears, like distant traffic or an oncoming storm he couldn’t see.
“What happened to the rest?” he asked, though he was no longer sure if he was talking to Maria, to Mrs. Henson, or to the walls of the house itself.
Maria stepped closer, glancing at the page, then at the empty drawer.
“That’s how I found it,” she said. “Just that one page. He kept it in a separate envelope like he was still thinking about what to say.”
Ethan stared at the half-finished letter, the promise of a confession hanging in the blank space his father had never filled.
His mind raced back through his childhood, trying to catch onto some hidden thread he had missed.
He thought of the way his father had sometimes gone quiet when the mail truck was late, the way he had tensed at certain envelopes, the night he had come home looking guilty but said nothing.
Buddy leaned against his leg, pressing warm weight into his shin as if anchoring him.
Ethan let his hand rest on the dog’s head, fingers sinking into the fur without really feeling it.
Somewhere in town, his father lay in a hospital bed with machines doing what his body could no longer manage on its own.
The letters on the table seemed to tilt slightly in his vision, as if asking him a question he didn’t yet know how to answer.
For years he had told himself that silence meant indifference, that if his father had really cared, he would have called, shown up, forced the issue.
Now, faced with a drawer full of unsent words and one page that hinted at something much bigger, Ethan realized the story might be more complicated than the version he had been living with.
He gathered the letters carefully into a neat stack, his movements slower and more deliberate.
“I’m taking these to the hospital,” he said, his voice steadier than he felt.
“If he wakes up, we’re going to finish at least one of these conversations while we still can.”
Maria nodded, relief and worry mixed in her eyes.
Mrs. Henson reached over and squeezed his shoulder, the gesture brief but solid.
Buddy trotted after Ethan as he headed for the door, the half-finished letter tucked safely inside his jacket, carrying with it the weight of everything his father had tried—and failed—to say.
Part 6 – What the Town Forgot
Ethan didn’t realize how tightly he was gripping the stack of letters until the nurse glanced at his hands and said, “You can sit, you know.”
The chair by his father’s bed creaked when he lowered himself into it, a sound that felt weirdly intimate in the quiet room.
Machines hummed at their own steady pace, ignoring the fact that the man they were attached to had a lifetime of unfinished sentences.
Frank lay as he had before, mouth slack on one side, chest rising and falling under the thin blanket.
Ethan cleared his throat, suddenly nervous, as if he were about to give a speech to someone who could grade him.
“I, uh… I found something at the house,” he said, more for his own benefit than his father’s.
He placed the first letter on his lap, the paper already soft from years in the drawer.
“Figured if you couldn’t talk, maybe I’d do the reading for both of us.”
He unfolded the earliest letter, the one written the week after he left town.
The words wavered a little as he read, but he forced himself to say them out loud.
“Dear Ethan. If you’re reading this, it means I finally found the courage to put a stamp on one of these things.”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “You never did, did you?”
He kept going.
He read the part about the quiet house, about the flip phone that was too confusing, about other parents bragging in the grocery store.
He stumbled slightly over the line where his father said he was proud but didn’t know how to say it without sounding foolish.
When he reached, “I’m sorry I made you feel like you were wrong for wanting more,” his voice broke in the middle of the word “sorry.”
Frank didn’t move, but the heart monitor ticked along, steady and stubborn.
Ethan watched his father’s eyelids for any flicker and saw nothing.
Still, saying the words into the air felt different than reading them alone in the living room.
It was like putting them back where they were supposed to be, even if they arrived late.
He picked up the second letter, the one from two years ago.
“I saw on the holiday card that your company sent…” he read, shaking his head. “You always hated those.”
He moved through the sentences about the building, the promotion, the jokes about “all those computers.”
By the time he finished the part about not wanting to steal time from Ethan’s long list of urgent things, his eyes were burning again.
“I didn’t even hang that card up,” Ethan admitted quietly.
“Just tossed it on the counter and forgot about it. You saw my whole life on one printed picture and I barely looked at it.”
The confession hung between them and the machines, heavier than the wires.
He pressed his fingers to his forehead, willing the sting in his eyes to hold off a little longer.
The third letter, the one about the fight, trembled when he unfolded it.
He read his father’s apology for choosing extra shifts over school events, the part about assuming Ethan would understand how hard it was to stay ahead.
He hit the line about never checking whether that understanding had actually happened and had to stop.
“I didn’t,” he said into the silence. “I didn’t understand. I just thought you chose them over me.”
A soft knock at the door broke through his thoughts.
The nurse from earlier slipped in, holding a small stack of papers and a printed photo.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just thought you should see this.”
She handed him the photo first.
It was a screenshot from the video, printed on regular paper.
Buddy stood in the middle of the post office floor, paws bloody, letter on the ground, eyes locked on the clerk behind the counter.
Someone had written “Local Hero Dog Saves Retired Mailman” across the top in bold letters.
Underneath were signatures and short notes in different handwriting.
“We put it on the bulletin board near the waiting area,” the nurse explained.
“People have been signing it, leaving little messages. I thought you might want a copy for your dad’s room.”
Ethan’s fingers smoothed the edge of the paper without thinking.
He read a few of the notes, each line like a small flicker of light.
“Frank delivered my disability checks rain or shine. He always asked how I was doing.”
“He’s the one who brought my college acceptance letter. I don’t think I ever thanked him properly.”
“He noticed when my porch light went out and brought over a bulb from his own house.”
“He’s not forgotten. Not by us.”
Ethan swallowed hard.
“I thought everybody just moved on,” he said.
The nurse shook her head. “They didn’t know how bad it was until the dog came in,” she admitted. “But people are talking now. We’ve had calls all day asking for updates.”
Outside in the lobby, the change was visible.
A small table near the chairs had been set up with pens and simple notecards.
A handwritten sign above it read, “Write a note to someone you’ve been meaning to reach out to. We’ll mail them for free.”
Someone had added, in smaller letters underneath, “In honor of Frank Carter and his dog.”
Kyle sat near the table with Buddy at his feet, answering questions from anyone who stopped to pet the dog.
Maria hovered nearby, handing out cards and offering to help older visitors address envelopes.
When Ethan stepped into the lobby, he saw a man in work boots frowning over a card as if it were a complicated blueprint.
“Never been good with words,” the man muttered.
Maria smiled and said, “Doesn’t have to be fancy. ‘Hi, I was thinking about you’ is enough.”
He nodded, scribbled something down, and slid the card into an envelope addressed to a brother in another state.
It looked small and ordinary, but he held it like it weighed a lot.
“What is all this?” Ethan asked, coming closer.
Kyle rubbed the back of his neck.
“People kept asking what they could do,” he said. “I figured maybe the answer isn’t just sending flowers or posting about your dad. Maybe it’s writing to their own people before it takes a dog breaking through glass to get their attention.”
Ethan looked around at the cluster of visitors hunched over the table.
Some wrote quickly, as if finally emptying a drawer they’d been stuffing full for years.
Others stared at the blank card for a long time before tentatively writing one or two lines.
A few just stood there, holding the pen like a question.
Buddy pressed his head against Ethan’s leg, tail giving a hopeful wag.
“He’s been working the room,” Kyle said, grinning faintly. “People open up faster when they’re scratching his ears.”
Maria’s smile faded a little. “There’s one thing,” she added. “Animal control came by earlier.”
Ethan stiffened.
“What did they say?”
“They heard about a dog breaking through a glass door and ending up in a hospital lobby,” Kyle said. “Rules and all that. They’re worried he might be ‘unhoused’ if your dad…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely toward the ceiling.
“They want to make sure he has a legal owner, or they’re supposed to take him to the shelter.”
Buddy seemed to sense the shift in energy, looking up at Ethan with wide eyes.
“He’s not going to a shelter,” Ethan said quietly, the words leaving no room for doubt.
“I’ll sign whatever I need to sign. He’s my dad’s dog. That makes him my dog.”
The idea of Buddy in a cage somewhere, waiting for a face that might never come, made his chest tighten.
Maria nodded, relief flickering briefly in her expression.
“They said they’d stop by tomorrow to do the paperwork,” she said.
“You can tell them you’re taking responsibility, that he’s got a home.”
She hesitated. “It means you’ll have to figure out what happens if you go back to the city.”
Ethan looked down at Buddy, who leaned into his leg as if trying to fuse himself there.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I will.”
The question of how long he was staying, what he would do about his job, about his life, hung unspoken between the three of them.
For once, Ethan didn’t try to answer it right away.
Back in the room, he pulled out the half-finished letter from his jacket.
He sat beside his father again, the chair familiar now, the rhythm of the monitor less terrifying.
“There’s one you didn’t finish,” he said, unfolding the single page.
“You wrote that there was something about my childhood you never told me the truth about. Then nothing. Just blank.”
He laid the letter on the blanket where his father could see it, whether or not he was aware.
“I don’t know what you were going to say,” he continued.
“Maybe it’s about that summer you were gone for a week and no one would tell me why. Or the time you looked at that envelope like it was going to explode and then stuffed it in your bag.”
He shook his head. “Whatever it is, I’m tired of guessing at who you were.”
His fingers tightened around the edge of the paper.
“I used your silence as an excuse,” he admitted.
“Easier to believe you didn’t care than to think you might have been scared or ashamed or whatever this is. I told myself I didn’t owe you anything because you hadn’t done it perfectly.”
He let out a long breath. “But you tried. These letters prove you tried more than I wanted to admit.”
The door opened again, and this time it was the doctor.
Her expression was more relaxed than before, a small, cautious smile touching the corners of her mouth.
“His vitals are improving,” she said. “It’s still early, but we’re seeing signs his brain is trying to reconnect pathways. There might be a window coming where he can communicate in simple ways. Maybe yes or no. Maybe a few words.”
Ethan’s pulse jumped.
“So he could… he could answer questions?”
“In time, possibly,” she said. “Not a long speech, but you might get more than just the machines talking back at you.”
She glanced at the letters on his lap. “Sometimes, when people wake up to familiar voices and stories, it helps them find their way back. Keep reading to him.”
After she left, the room felt charged in a new way.
Not just with fear and regret, but with something else that scared him even more: the possibility of answers.
He gathered the letters into a careful stack again, tucking the half-finished one on top.
“If you get a window,” he murmured, “we’re using it. No more leaving drawers full of unsent mail.”
As he stood to leave, the nurse hurried back in, carrying a clear plastic bag with a few personal items.
“These were with his things when they brought him in,” she said. “We logged them at the desk, but I thought you might want them now.”
Inside were his father’s wallet, a ring of keys, a worn pocketknife, and a single envelope folded over on itself.
Ethan’s name was on the front in his father’s handwriting, but the address was different—just “Ethan Carter, age 17, Maple Ridge.”
He took the bag, suddenly aware of how loud the monitor sounded.
The envelope inside was sealed, the flap glued shut years ago and never opened.
The paper had a slight curl at the corners, the way it did when something had been carried around too long in a jacket pocket.
For a long moment, he stood between the bed and the doorway, the weight of his father’s unsent words in one hand and this sealed, untouched one in the other, wondering which truth he was about to walk into first.