Two weeks later, Maya was elbow-deep in paint water, trying to coax nine-year-old Sophie into expressing something anything about her father's deployment, when her phone buzzed with a photo from her mailbox camera.
She ignored it. Sophie had finally picked up a brush after twenty minutes of silent resistance, and Maya knew better than to break the fragile concentration that came before breakthrough.
"You can use any colors you want," Maya said softly. "There's no right or wrong here."
Sophie's hand hovered over the paint palette, then dove for the red. Angry red, the color of everything she couldn't say about missing her dad, about being scared, about her mom crying when she thought Sophie was asleep.
Good. Anger was honest. Anger meant they were getting somewhere.
By the time Sophie's mom picked her up the painting clutched protectively to her chest, still wet and dripping Maya had forgotten about the notification. She cleaned up the art room in her small office suite, humming tunelessly, trying to decide if she had the energy to see her own therapist later or if she'd cancel again.
She'd already rescheduled twice. Dr. Chen was patient, but even patience had limits.
Her phone buzzed again. A text from Sienna: Check your mail. And before you spiral, just breathe.
Maya's stomach dropped. That was never a good sign.
She pulled up the mailbox camera photo and stared at the image for a full minute, her heart doing complicated things in her chest.
A postcard. Glacier-blue ice against impossible sky, the image so vivid she could almost feel the cold.
She knew who it was from before she even read the back.
Maya waited until she got home to retrieve it, as if delaying would somehow make it less real. Her apartment was quiet it was always quiet and she stood in her small kitchen with the postcard in her hands, reading the back three times before the words fully registered.
Maya,
I know you said goodbye. I'm respecting that. But I'm in Iceland again (different glacier, same existential crisis) and I kept thinking about our conversation. About honesty. About how rare it is to talk to someone and feel like you're actually being heard.
I'm not asking for anything. I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you.
The glacier is called Langjökull, which sounds like a spell from Harry Potter. Rósa says hello.
- Ethan
His handwriting was messier than she'd expected, slanting slightly to the right, some letters cramped together like he'd been writing on an uneven surface. There was a small water stain in the corner rain, probably, or melted snow.
Maya set the postcard on her kitchen counter and stared at it.
She should throw it away. Should not respond. Should definitely not read it four more times, analyzing every word choice, every implication.
She read it four more times.
I'm not asking for anything.
But he was, wasn't he? By sending this at all, by keeping the door open, he was asking her to step through it. Or at least acknowledge that the door existed.
Maya picked up her phone, pulled up his contact still saved, still there after two weeks of not deleting it and started typing.
The glacier looks cold.
She deleted it. Too flippant.
Thank you for thinking of me.
Deleted. Too formal.
I've been thinking about you too.
Deleted immediately. Too honest, too dangerous, too much.
Maya set down her phone and picked up the postcard again. She walked to her bedroom, where her mother's paintings lined the walls abstract watercolors that somehow captured emotion better than any realistic portrait. Her mother had believed in bold choices, in saying yes, in living out loud.
Her mother was also dead.
Maya tucked the postcard into her nightstand drawer and closed it firmly. Out of sight, if not out of mind.
She didn't respond.
Five days later, another postcard arrived.
This one showed the Northern Lights, green and ethereal against a black sky. On the back:
Maya,
Still in Iceland. Rósa is trying to set me up with her granddaughter, who is lovely and completely uninterested (she has a girlfriend in Reykjavik). But Rósa is persistent. I told her I met someone. She asked if you were the reason I keep checking my phone.
I didn't know how to explain that you're not checking yours.
Saw the lights last night. Thought about how you'd try to capture that color the way it moves, shifts, refuses to be still. I bet you'd find a way.
No pressure. Just wanted to share this…
Maya read it standing at her mailbox, her breath visible in the October air. Her neighbors probably thought she was strange, frozen there with a postcard in her hand and tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.
I told her I met someone.
Past tense. Met, not meeting. Because they'd had one night and she'd run and that was the end of it. That was all it could be.
Except he kept sending postcards.
This time she made it inside before she started crying. Not the wracking sobs that had consumed her after her mother's death, but quiet tears that felt like grief and longing mixed together into something she couldn't name.
She pulled out her phone.
The Northern Lights are beautiful. I'm glad you got to see them.
Her thumb hovered over send for thirty seconds before she deleted it and put her phone away.
The postcards kept coming.
Norway. A fjord so blue it looked unreal.
Hiking is harder than it looks. I fell in a stream. Very undignified. Wished you were here to laugh at me.
Sweden. A small red house against snow.
Met a family who's lived in this house for six generations. They have photos on every wall births, deaths, weddings, ordinary Tuesdays. Made me think about roots, about what we're running from vs. what we're running toward.
Denmark. The colorful houses of Nyhavn reflected in canal water.
This place is full of couples holding hands. I'm the asshole photographer documenting their happiness while eating pastries alone. Living the dream.
Each postcard was a small wound and a small gift. Each one she tucked into her nightstand drawer, not throwing away but not responding to either. She existed in the space between lacknowledging receipt without reciprocating, seeing without being seen.
Sienna noticed, of course. She came over three weeks after the first postcard arrived, took one look at Maya's face, and said, "You're getting mail from him."
It wasn't a question.
Maya was chopping vegetables for a stir-fry she didn't want to eat, but cooking was something to do with her hands. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Uh-huh. And I don't know my own husband." Sienna hopped onto the counter, stealing a piece of bell pepper. "How many?"
"Six."
"Have you responded to any of them?"
Maya's silence was answer enough.
Sienna sighed. "What are you afraid of?"
"Everything. Nothing. I don't know." Maya set down the knife before she cut herself. "He's in Europe, Sienna. Traveling, doing exactly what he said he does never staying, always leaving. Why would I"
"Because he's thinking about you. Because he's trying." Sienna's voice was gentle but firm. "Because maybe he's scared too, and this is what bravery looks like for him."
"Postcards aren't bravery."