June gave a sad little smile. “That sounds like him.”
Michael reached first for the bundles marked ELE.
He looked at June as if asking permission, then realized how absurd the instinct was. These letters belonged to his father and, by extension, to whatever remained of the family story. He opened one bundle carefully. The top letter was from Eleanor to Thomas while he was away on a three-week training rotation when Michael was six. The handwriting was younger, rounder, more hopeful than the tight neat script Michael knew from grocery lists and birthday cards.
Tom, she wrote, Michael insists on wearing your old patrol cap around the house and saluting the dog. I would like you to know this is your fault. The second paragraph described a leaking kitchen faucet and a PTA meeting. The third said, I miss having another adult to be irritated with, which made June laugh aloud before catching herself and covering her mouth.
Michael laughed too, then stopped, unexpectedly emotional.
He had never read his mother as a young wife in real time. He had only known her retrospectively, through the worn-down version marriage and divorce had left behind. In those letters she was vivid, funny, sharp, lonely, flirtatious, and full of the thousand mundane details that constitute actual family life. Thomas had saved them all. Not one or two. All.
“Do you think she knows he kept these?” June asked.