1921. Would you mind opening it? Just hold it where I can’t read it, and let me speak, yes?”
Emily fumbled the letter out on her lap.
“Well?” she said.
“Just this,” he said, and shut his eyes and began to recite in a voice they could hardly hear:
“My dearest dear Emily—”
Emily sucked in her breath.
The old man waited, eyes shut, and then repeated the words signed across the inside of his eyelids:
“My dearest dear Emily. I know not how to address you or pour out all that is in my heart—”
Emily let her breath out.
The old man whispered:
“—I have admired you for so many months and years, and yet when I have seen you, when we have danced or shared picnics with your friends at the lake, I had found myself unable to speak—but now at last I must speak my tenderest thoughts or find myself mad beyond salvation—”
Rose took out her handkerchief and applied it to her nose. Emily took out hers and applied it to her eyes.
His voice was soft and then loud and then soft again:
“—and the thought of anything more than that, the merest kiss, shakes me that I dare to put it in words—”
He finished, whispering:
“—until that hour and day, I send you my affections and kindest thoughts for your future life and existence. Signed William Ross Fielding. Now. Second letter.”
Emily opened the second letter and held it where he could not see it.
“Dearest dear one,” he said. “You have not answered my first letter which means one or several things: you did not receive it, it was kept from you, or you received, destroyed it, or hid it away. If I have offended you, forgive— Everywhere I go, your name is spoken. Young men speak of you. Young women tell rumors that soon you may travel away by ocean liner …”
“They did that, in those days,” said Emily, almost to herself. “Young women, sometimes young men, sent off for a year to forget.”
“Even if there was nothing to forget?” said the old man, reading his own palms spread out on his knees.
“Even that. I have another letter here. Can you tell me what it says?”
She opened it and her eyes grew wet as she read the lines and heard him, head down, speak them quietly, from remembrance.
“Dearest dear, do I dare say it, love of my life? You are leaving tomorrow and will not return until long after Christmas. Your engagement has been announced to someone already in Paris, waiting. I wish you a grand life and a happy one and many children. Forget my name. Forget it? Why, dear girl, you never knew it. Willie or Will? I think you called me that. But there was no last name, really, so nothing to forget. Remember instead my love. Signed W.R.F.”
Finished, he sat back and opened his eyes as she folded the letter and placed it with the others in her lap, tears running down her cheeks.
“Why,” she asked at last, “did you steal the letters? And use them this way, sixty years later? Who told you where the letters might be? I buried them in that coffin, that trunk, when I sailed to France. I don’t think I have looked at them more than once in the past thirty years. Did William Ross Fielding tell you about them?”
“Why, dear girl, haven’t you guessed?” said the old man. “My Lord, I am William Ross Fielding.”
There was an incredibly long silence.
“Let me look at you.” Emily leaned forward as he raised his head into the light.
“No,” she said. “I wish I could say. Nothing.”
“It’s an old man’s face now,” he said. “No matter. When you sailed around the world one way, I went another. I have lived in many countries and done many things, a bachelor traveling. When I heard that you had no children and that your husband died, many years ago, I drifted back to this, my grandparents’ house. It has taken all these years to nerve myself to find and send this best part of my life to you.”
The two sisters were very still. You could almost hear their hearts beating. The old man said:
“What now?”
“Why,” said Emily Bernice Watriss Wilkes slowly, “every day for the next two weeks, send the rest of the letters. One by one.”
He looked at her, steadily.
“And then?” he said.
“Oh, God!” she said. “I don’t know. Let’s see.”
“Yes, yes. Indeed. Let’s say good-bye.”
Opening the front door he almost touched her hand.
“My dear dearest Emily,” he said.
“Yes?” She waited.
“What—” he said.
“Yes?” she said.
“What …” he said, and swallowed. “What … are you …”
She waited.
“Doing tonight?” he finished, quickly.
“Remember me? Of course, surely you do!”
His hand extended, the stranger waited.
“Why, yes,” I said. “You’re—”
I stopped and searched around for help. We were in middle-street in Florence, Italy, at high noon. He had been rushing one way, I the other, and almost collided. Now he waited to hear his name off my lips. Panicking, I rummaged my brain which ran on empty.
“You’re—” I said again.
He seized my hand as if fearing I might bolt and run. His face was a sunburst. He knew me! Shouldn’t I return the honor? There’s a good dog, he thought, speak!
“I’m Harry!” he cried.
“Harry …?”
“Stadler!” he barked with a laugh. “Your butcher!”
“Jesus, of course. Harry, you old son of a bitch!” I pumped his hand with relief.
He almost danced with joy. “That son of a bitch, yes! Nine thousand miles from home. No wonder you didn’t know me! Hey, we’ll get killed out here. I’m at the Grand Hotel. The lobby parquetry floor, amazing! Dinner tonight? Florentine steaks—listen
