One day I found, in a half-closed drawer in her bedroom while I was changing her sheets, several old letters. All of them were returned by the post office, all addressed to the same place in Monterrey, Mexico, all with the same last name that I recognized as her maiden name—the name she would have used before marriage.
None of them were opened.
I said nothing about what I had found.
Neither did she, when she realized I had seen them.
But that night, for the first time, when I was leaving her house to head to my evening shift at the bookstore where I worked the register and shelved books, she asked with a vulnerability that broke my heart:
“Could you come back tomorrow?”
I did.
And the next day as well.
The Decline
Her health began to worsen with the kind of speed that seemed almost deliberate, as if her body had finally received permission to stop fighting and was accepting that permission with relief.
