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She laughed. “See you when you get back. Let’s do a workout. Maybe I can knock some sense into you.”

“Oorah.”

“Oorah, yourself,” she said and ended the call.

When the webinar was finished, I packed up my gear and drove down the strip to the Lewis house. I quickly dropped off the package of letters in their mailbox at the end of the driveway.

I kept the photos for myself.

I know I should have gone up to the door and dropped the letters off in person so I could shake hands with Dan’s parents and offer my thanks, even if I couldn’t really tell them why, but I didn’t.

I drove off, leaving Topsail Beach with a sick feeling in my gut, wishing I had the sense to do things right instead of fucking everything up so thoroughly.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Miranda

I met Leah that morning for a workout at the gym, and then went back home to have a shower before my afternoon shift.

When I arrived at the house, Scott was waiting for me, a package in his hand.

“What’s that?” I asked, putting down my gym bag.

“It’s addressed to you. I found it in our mailbox this morning.”

I took the package and went to the island in the kitchen. It was a FedEx package that was addressed to me, but it hadn’t been actually sent. There was no return address. I opened it up and inside was a manila envelope with Dan’s name written on the outside.

“It’s addressed to Dan.” I frowned and opened the flap. Inside were two dozen letters wrapped in a blue foil ribbon. I recognized them at once as the letters I’d sent to Dan while he was on deployment. I read the first few sentences of one letter, and then sorted through them – thirty letters, written on airmail paper, in my tiny scrawl. Love letters I wrote to him when he was over in Afghanistan after our wedding. Dated from a week after we were married, they detailed my life while he was away, my plans for returning to class at John Jay in Manhattan, my hopes and dreams for our marriage and new lives together now that we had tied the knot.

There was a smear of blood on the ribbon and on several letters.

I held the letters away from me, for it had to be Dan’s blood.

“What is it, dear?” Scott said, frowning when he saw me with the blood-tinged letters.

“They’re letters I wrote to Dan…”

He took them and saw the blood. His eyes met mine. “Where did these come from? Why is there blood on them?”

I sat on the stool and took the letters back, reading them over, trying to figure out why these weren’t sent back with Dan’s personal effects.

“They must have been lost when they sent his kit back. Someone must have found them.”

“But why the blood?”

I looked at him, my vision blurring. “He said he always carried them inside his uniform when he went on a mission.”

Scott nodded and when tears filled my eyes, he came over and put his arms around me, held me to his chest.

“They must have been misplaced,” I managed to say despite the choke in my throat. “Maybe someone found them and sent them back.”

“I have no idea, sweetheart,” he replied. “I would have thought someone would tell us if they did.”

Jeanne joined us from outside, where she had been gardening, her straw hat still on, her cheeks rosy from the noon-day heat.

“What’s the matter?” She put down her gardening gloves and a bouquet of wild flowers.

Scott spoke, his voice emotional. “Some letters that Miranda wrote to Dan were returned this morning. Someone dropped them off in the mail.”