I set the bin down on Grandpa’s new kitchen table. I took the lid off.
He looked inside at the hundred and forty-one envelopes in his own handwriting. And under them, my sixteen-year-old letters to him. Every single one sealed.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. He just reached in and touched the top bundle with his fingertips.
“I want to read them,” I said. “Every single one. And I want you to read mine. Out loud. Together. One a week.”
He looked up at me.
“One a week?” he said. “That’s almost three years.”
“I know.”
He smiled. That old, sharp, wonderful smile.
“Then I guess I’d better stick around,” he said.
We read one every Sunday afternoon on his porch.
He’d read me one of his. I’d read him one of mine. Then we’d talk about whatever was in them. The birds at his old feeder. A math puzzle I never got to solve. The first time I got a B in chemistry and was so upset I wrote him four pages about it.
