The letter came on the fourteenth of December.Maya was at her kitchen table with her laptop open, cross-referencing travel photographer Daniel Ward with hospices in Oregon — because Caroline, his sister, was in Portland, and it was the closest thing to a lead she had — when she heard the mail slot.She almost didn't check it. She almost let it sit.She went to the door. There were three pieces of mail. Two were bills. The third was a pale blue envelope, hand-addressed in handwriting she would have known underwater, in the dark.Postmarked: Ashland, Oregon.She stood in her hallway for a long time, holding it.Then she sat down on the floor, because that seemed appropriate, and she opened it.* * *
Maya,
I've started this letter nine times. I keep not finishing it because finishing it means sending it, and sending it means saying goodbye, and I have been extraordinarily bad at goodbyes my entire life.
So. Here is the truth I should have told you sooner. Here it is in a letter, which is a coward's delivery method and I know that. I'm sorry.
I was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Grade IV in February. It's a brain tumour — the aggressive kind, the kind you don't negotiate with. I was given six to nine months. I chose not to do treatment, not because I wasn't scared, but because I wanted the time I had left to be mine. I moved to your city because it was somewhere I'd never been and where nobody knew me.
I did not plan on you.
You should know that. I was not looking for someone to spend whatever I had left with. I was not trying to fall in love. And then you were there, in a cardigan that was losing the battle with the rain, and you nearly knocked my coffee across the room, and you apologised like you'd committed an actual crime, and I thought: well. There she is.
I should have told you that first week. I should have told you a hundred times after that. I know that. I have no excuse that holds up, except that I was happy — genuinely, surprisingly happy — and I was afraid that telling you would end it, and I was not ready for it to end.
I left because I was getting worse and I couldn't let you watch that. I know you would have stayed. I know you. You stay. You water plants and keep umbrellas that aren't yours and sit on rooftops with bad wine and ask the questions that need asking, and you are braver than anyone I have ever met. And I couldn't let your bravery be spent on watching me go.
I am at Crestview Hospice in Ashland, Oregon. I am okay, for now. I have my camera, and my sister Caroline is here, which helps.
I have something I want to give you, when you're ready. Or when I'm not able to anymore and someone else has to give it to you. I hope it's the first one.
You told me once, in Birch & Brew, that if you love someone you owe them the truth. Even if the truth is hard. Especially then.
You were right. You were right and I was a coward and I am sorry.
The truth is this: I have loved you since the rooftop. Since before the rooftop, if I'm being honest. Since the red umbrella that wasn't yours. Since you held it anyway out of habit, against a clear sky, and I thought: this woman carries things. This woman is careful with things. I want to be one of the things she's careful with.
I know this letter is too much and not enough. I know it arrives too late and in the wrong medium.
But here it is. The truth I owe you. Finally.
I hope you get to read this. Both parts of that sentence.
— Daniel* * *Maya sat on her floor for a long time after that.The pot of herbs was on the windowsill, green and improbable in December. The red umbrella was by the door. On the wall, the drawings of her students.She got up. She picked up her phone. She looked up Crestview Hospice in Ashland, Oregon. She looked up the distance.Seven hundred and twelve miles.She opened her laptop. She bought a ticket.She packed a bag in eighteen minutes, which was not enough time but was all the time she had.She called Priya."I'm going to Oregon."Priya was quiet for exactly two seconds. Then: "Drive safe. Call me when you land."Maya picked up the red umbrella on the way out the door. She didn't know why. Habit, probably. Or maybe because it had been there at the beginning and it seemed right for it to be here now.She went to find him.
