The bottom of the box was stuffed with letters.
“Okay,” I say, the smile on my face mirroring the one currently on Elliot’s. “Nowwe’re in a movie.”
Outside the giant living room window, the sun is starting to make its way towards the horizon, turning the sky a soft pink which is reflected on the snow beneath it.
Elliot and I aren’t looking at the view, though.
No, Elliot and I are sitting side by side on the sofa — in the middle this time, rather than at opposite ends — poring over the letters we found in the box, which are all dated from just after the war, and all written to Evie from Luke: Elliot’s great-grandfather.
“He wasn’t exactly a man of many words, was he?” says Elliot, once the initial excitement of finding the letters in the first place has worn off, and we’ve finally stopped repeating variations of the words, “I can’t believe this! Canyoubelieve this? Because I can’t believe this!” over and over again.
“Well, these might not beallthe letters he sent her,” I reply. “There wasn’t a huge amount of space in that box. These are probably just the only ones she kept.”
“No, I just meant … they’re not exactly romantic, are they?”
I look down at the letter in my hand, in which Luke describes in detail a fishing trip he went on with his kid brother. It’s one of only four letters Evie deemed worthy of The Secret Compartment, as we’re calling it, and let’s just say it’s a good job it was Elliot who decided to write the greatest love story ever told (According to Levi, anyway…), because I’m not sure ol’ Luke would’ve had it in him.
“Well, no,” I admit, my eyes landing on a paragraph in which a tarpon puts up a particularly spirited fight. “But at least you know what happened to them now. You know there’s no big mystery about why they didn’t end up together. They just agreed not to. That’s all there was to it.”
And that is, it would seem,all there was to it. As far as we can tell from Luke’s faded — and honestly kind of illegible — handwriting, Evie and Luke had themselves a bit of a fling while he was stationed in England, but they knew it was only temporary; that there really wasn’t much prospect of them staying together after the war. And so they decided, by mutual agreement, to call it quits; although it looks like they did stick it out as pen-pals of sorts, for a few years at least.
They did what Elliot and I should have done when we met, in other words; they enjoyed each other’s company, and then, when it was time, they went their separate ways.
YOLO, as Levi would say.
“I guess long-distant relationships weren’t very common in those days,” Elliot says thoughtfully.
“It would’ve been pretty difficult without email, at least,” I agree, picking up one of the blue airmail envelopes. “Imagine how long it would’ve taken for this to make it across the Atlantic.”
“And phone calls would’ve been expensive, too,” adds Elliot. “I don’t think Luke was particularly well-off.”
“No. And it sounds like Evie had family here to think about, too. He mentions her baby sister a couple of times, and his little brother was only 10 when Luke enlisted. It would’ve been hard for either of them to leave their loved ones behind and just switch continents to be together.”
Elliot doesn’t comment on this, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am; which has nothing to do with Evie and Luke, and everything to do with me and him.
A love letter. He said his book was supposed to be a love letter. To me.
Now that I’ve had the chance to think about it, and take in what he said, I really want to ask him what he meant by that. It’s all I can think about. But I can’t seem to figure out a way to wrestle the conversation back to that moment before I tried to storm out of the room, and ended up changing everything.
I really wish I hadn’t done that now. Although, I suppose if I hadn’t, we’d never have found the letters; which are now allhecan think about.
“Is it bad of me to admit I was hoping for something a bit more dramatic?” Elliot says, smiling ruefully. “Or at least some really solid reason why they couldn’t stay together?”
“I think thesearereally solid reasons,” I say firmly. “Family commitments, culture clashes, the difficulty of moving overseas … Those things aren’t nothing. I think it was very grown-up of them, actually; to realize it wasn’t going to work and save themselves the heartache of trying to force it. Very sensible. Especially considering how young they were.”
I’m still not sure I’m talking about Evie and Luke right now. And judging by the look on his face, Elliot isn’t convinced either.
“Sensible, huh?” he says softly. “I guess that’s one way to put it. Gotta keep yourself safe, don’t you? Even if it means giving something up that could’ve been amazing.”
He gets to his feet, running a hand through his dark hair in an agitated way that suggests I’ve hit a nerve.
“Not all stories have to have some kind of dramatic plot twist, Elliot,” I say defensively. “Some of them are just ordinary. It doesn’t make them any less magical, though. Ordinary things can still be beautiful.”
I think of the photos he once showed me; the sheer joy radiating out of the couple’s faces as they enjoyed their wartime fling. And I think of that first date, when we danced together in the town hall, and it felt like the start of something, even though it turned out to be just the beginning of the end. I think about a snowflake landing on the end of his nose. A glass globe containing two tiny people who looked just like us.
Ordinary things really can be beautiful.
Elliot looks at me for a long moment, his expression impossible to read.
