Chapter One:
It came in the mail. How long it had sat in the mailbox Rhoberta Bree Mann—known as Bree—didn’t know. It had been at least a month since she had put a foot outside her door, let alone checked her mail.
She only got the letter because the mailman, frustrated with the filled-to-overflowing mailbox, had dumped all her mail into a box, pounded on the door, and rang the doorbell before stomping away. Anger still poured out of him as he stepped into his truck. Bree was sure he would have slammed the truck door if it had one.
Before driving away, the mailman looked back at the house, and when he glimpsed Bree’s face peeking from behind the curtain, pointed at the door, looking as stern as she had ever seen him. But after pulling away, he stopped and looked back at the house. He sighed, his lined face drooping. Bree almost felt sorry for him. He had been their mailman for many years, and he knew why she had not collected the mail.
Bree tried to find the energy to at least lift a finger to wave, but she couldn’t. Instead, as he drove silently away, heading to the next house almost a quarter of a mile away, Bree gathered all the energy she had, opened the door, and slid the box inside. She turned and shut the door with her back, allowing herself to slide to the floor and stare at the box in front of her.
It was dusty and falling apart at the seams. Did he find the box by the side of the road and decide it was a good way to get rid of the mail that had been collecting in her mailbox? The box looked like she felt. Old and abandoned.
How was she to know that inside the box of mail was her husband’s last gift to her? Would it have made any difference? Days later, holding his letter in her hand, she would force herself to open it, dreading what it meant.
But that day, she closed her eyes, rolled over on her side, and lay on the floor. She could feel the draft on her back, the opening under the door that Paul had promised to fix but never got around to doing.
The memory of how frustrated she had been with him for not fixing it, how she had decided to do it herself but never had the chance, started the now-familiar wave of grief and guilt that fell on her like a blanket, and Bree wept again. Not caring that she was on the floor. Not caring that her nose was running, that she could smell herself, that her hair was full of tangles, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had showered.
Not caring about anything at all. Except now, there was a box in front of her that demanded her attention. Bree knew that once she dealt with the box, it would open the door to living again. And that’s not what she wanted.
Bree wanted her heart to stop beating. She wanted to join her husband wherever he was because she was sure he was waiting. He had promised. Long ago, on the day they married, he had promised that it wasn’t just until death. It was forever.
But she couldn’t even decide how to kill herself, let alone gather the courage to pull it off. The thought that someone would find her and have to deal with the mess added to her inability to leave this life.
She, who lived with everything in a neat order, everything in its place, could not force that terrible disorder on someone else. Drowning herself was an option. But that would mean driving to the lake and then finding a way to make herself stay underwater. Too hard to do.
That day, laying on the floor in her own mess, Bree didn’t even have the courage to open her eyes, knowing that all she would see was disorder. A neglected house.
Under the table by the door, dirt screamed at her to get up. The unwashed dishes added their voice to the cacophony of voices in her head that told her she was a useless piece of work, had never deserved Paul, and it was her fault he had died.
But the box. The box was different. The voice of the box was both demanding and soothing. It was reminding Bree that, like it, she was still useful. The box aroused her curiosity, and that pissed her off. Because Bree knew that once she was curious, her time of mourning would come to a close. Life would move on. She would have to pretend to live instead of wanting to die.
So she lay there for another hour, finally sitting up, back still against the door, and stared at the box that called her to start living again. Sighing so hard it hurt her chest, she grabbed the box and dumped the mail onto the floor. Years of practice managing chaos and putting things in order kept her moving forward without thinking.
She made piles of junk mail, bills, the local papers, and the catalogs that she could never stop from arriving. She slid into a pile the cards she knew contained words of sympathy that would never change anything. She didn’t want to see them.
But one letter stood out. Of course, Paul meant it to. Did he know she would be tempted to throw all the cards in the trash without opening them? Of course, he did.
Paul had taken no chances that she would ignore his letter. Stickers covered the envelope. Hearts, flowers, and tree stickers made the stamp barely visible in the corner.
Bree stared at the envelope addressed to her in handwriting as familiar as her own, and holding it close to her heart, she lay back down on the floor and asked the gods once more to “please, please, please, let me die.”
Hours later, still alive and knowing death was not coming for her, she let herself drift back in time. Fingering the gold necklace with a tiny ruby in the center that he had given her as a wedding present, she remembered the moment she had first seen him, and turned to her friend and said, “I’m going to marry him.”
