Emma
Three days later, the envelope slipped through the letterbox, landing with a faint slap on the hallway floor. I was halfway down the stairs when I saw it — his handwriting, looping and certain, my name across the front like it belonged to me alone.
My heart gave a wild, clumsy leap. I didn't even care that Teddy and the twins were bickering in the kitchen or that Zoey was singing to her dolls at the top of her lungs. None of it mattered.
I snatched the envelope up, held it against my chest for a moment as if I could soak in the warmth of his hands, then slipped into the sitting room. The curtains were half-drawn against the afternoon sun, the air heavy with the faint scent of the flowers in the vase.
My fingers trembled as I tore it open. The sound of paper ripping was too loud, like a secret escaping.
His words came to me in pieces, scattered and imperfect, yet carrying all of him.
"Emma, I can still feel your hand in mine, like it's burned into me. I thought leaving would be the hardest part, but it turns out it's this — knowing you're out there somewhere and I can't just walk down to the lake and find you. I miss you more than I know how to say."
I pressed my palm against my mouth, my throat thick. The ache in my chest was sharp, familiar — but threaded with something sweeter.
"I keep thinking about the way you looked at me when I gave you the ring. Like I mattered. Like I was worth something. No one's ever looked at me like that, Emma. No one. I love you for it, and for a hundred other reasons I'll never be able to fit on paper."
The word — love — leapt off the page, searing me. My breath hitched, and I hugged the letter to my chest, whispering it aloud just to taste it again. "Love."
The room swam, but I forced myself to keep reading.
"I don't care how long it takes, or how many trains I have to catch, or how many lies I have to tell my father to get away. I'll do it. Because you're worth it, Emma. You always will be."
I bent my head over the page, tears dripping onto the ink, smudging it faintly. I couldn't stop them, didn't want to.
Teddy poked his head around the door then, his voice teasing but soft.
"Letter from Tommy?"
I nodded, unable to speak, my throat tight.
"Good," he said with a smile, and left me to it.
I traced the loops of Tommy's signature at the bottom, as if by doing so I could bridge the miles between us. The ache of missing him didn't vanish — it never would — but for the first time in days, it felt bearable.
Because in my hands I held proof: I wasn't alone in it. He was holding on too.
Tommy
Nights were the worst.
When the house went quiet and even the tick of the old clock seemed too loud, that was when the ache for Emma hollowed me out the most. I'd lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, half-dreaming her beside me. I could almost feel the warmth of her hair spilling over my chest, her breath feathering my collarbone, her hand curled in mine.
But every time I reached out, it was only air.
I turned on my side, restless, my body craving her nearness in a way words couldn't say. It wasn't just the shape of her, or the softness — it was everything. The way she fit against me like she was meant to be there. The way her laugh had a way of unravelling every knot of doubt I'd ever carried. The way she looked at me — God, that look — like she saw me, flaws and all and decided I was enough.
I closed my eyes and her smile bloomed in the dark. It was cruel, how memory could be both balm and blade. I ached for it, for her lips brushing mine, for the small, minute details — her head tilting toward me when she spoke, her thumb tracing circles over my knuckles, the little huffs of breath when she didn't believe something I'd said to her.
Every letter I wrote felt like trying to trap the ocean in a bottle. Too much, yet never enough. I wanted to tell her everything: how her absence was a wound and a promise all at once, how I carried her through every hour of the day. But the words collapsed under the weight of it.
I rolled onto my back again, throwing an arm over my eyes. "Emma," I whispered into the empty room, as though her name alone could summon her. Every beat of my heart carried the ache of her absence.
I dreamed about her more nights than I didn't. In those dreams, we weren't pressed against train station walls, clinging to borrowed minutes. We had time. Whole days to sit beneath the trees, mornings to wake with sunlight in her hair. Dreams where I could hold her and never let go, without the world waiting to tear us apart.
And every morning I woke with that cruel, sharp fall — the realisation that she wasn't lying against me, that my arms were empty.
So I wrote. I poured every ounce of the ache and longing into ink, chasing some pale shadow of her across the page. Sometimes I thought the paper would burn beneath my hand from the force of it.
"Emma," I wrote, my hand shaking, "I miss you so much it feels like I'm carrying an open wound. I dream about you every night. Your smile, your embrace, the way you whisper my name. It's enough to keep me alive, but it's never enough to satisfy the hunger I feel for you. I want more than dreams. I want you."
I set the pen down, chest heaving. The room felt too small to hold everything inside me.
I folded the letter carefully, slid it into an envelope, and pressed my lips to it before sealing it shut. It was ridiculous, maybe, but in some childish corner of me I hoped a piece of me would travel with it, crossing the distance between us.
When I dropped it into the postbox the next morning, the clang of metal echoed like a it heard everything I'd written in it.
I walked away with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, heart still thrumming. Emma would read those words soon.
And maybe, just maybe, she'd feel what I did — this impossible mixture of devastation and hope, of aching for her touch yet believing in the strength of us.