Sunshine Valley

The letters

     After what Dillon thought was a perfect evening, he opened the door for her. Extended his hand to help her out of his truck, walking her to her door. 

     “How good is your memory?”

     He smiled, “depends?”

     “Remember these numbers.” She entered 4 numbers into a keypad on her front door. That’s your code to get into the house. 

     He took out his phone, quickly making a note of his code. “This is new.” 

     “I told you Doug is a dangerous man. It is my plan to make it as difficult for him as I can. The same code will work for the back door. Are you free any time this weekend? To look at furniture?”

     “Saturday.”

     “Call me.” 

     “Evie.” He presented her with a very old, very large envelope. Little boxes had been drawn in the top right hand corner with different shapes inside them. There in the middle was her name and address. In the left corner, was the name of that summer camp and Dillon’s name. He sighed, “everything was paid for. Everything I needed. Except snacks, stamps, stuff like that cost extra and dad didn’t give me any money. The day I got home I put all those letters in a brown paper sack and ran as fast as I could to the lumber yard.” He stopped remembering that day. “I handed Jack the bag full of letters and begged him not to tell you that I was home. He sat me down beside that big desk, pulled out that envelope.” 

     Evie smiled remembering that big desk and how it filled his office. 

     “One by one he pulled the wadded wrinkled letters out of the bag, smoothen’ them out with his hand. He told me what to write on the envelope as he pulled endless letters from that bag. He showed me a stamp, told me how many to put on the envelope, and I tried so hard to draw them as close to the real stamp as I could. When I had finished, he slid the letters inside and I sealed it.” Dillon looked at her. “I wrote you every day Evelyn.” 

Sunshine Valley