The Last Letter

It had been seven years since Margaret last set foot in Ashford Hall. A letter, yellowed and worn at the creases, rested in her coat pocket — warm from her body heat, pulsing with the weight of things unsaid. "Come home," it said. Just two words, but they had undone seven years of carefully constructed distance in the time it took to open an envelope. The front door was unlocked. He was standing in the library, exactly where shed left him in a hundred daydreams. Older now. Gray threaded through his temples. "You came," he said, and his voice cracked. Margaret pulled the letter from her pocket. "You asked."