There was nothing fancy about the envelope, just a standard white business envelope. The postage was the basic flag forever stamp. Nothing but the address and return label on it. It would have been easy to ignore, toss it out as junk. But I recognized the return address, and it demanded my attention.

She had gone out of her way to type the address rather than write it in her easily recognizable looping script. That seemed heavy with meaning. Yet I couldn’t be sure what that meaning might be.

It would be simple to just open it and remove all the mystery. Instead, I had sat staring at it for over an hour, not even daring to touch it. It merely lay there, a veiled threat, already made, but not yet received.

It was probably the letter where she finally tells me everything I did wrong. How I hurt her. How I destroyed the relationship. Why I was a bad person and would never find happiness. The letter I had been waiting for, that confirmed everything I had been thinking over the last year. I wasn’t ready for that.

On the other hand, it might be mundane, just some unfinished business, fallout from disentangling two lives. Something about a signature on an official piece of paper. Or settling some outstanding financial matter. In any event, that would explain the impersonal envelope. Just business, nothing emotional.

I wasn’t sure which would be worse. Did I want to read someone else confirm all the horrible things I thought about myself? Or did I want to see five years reduced to some meaningless paperwork? I didn’t know. And I still haven’t opened the envelope.