Free 9 Letters by Blake Austin

and she smiled right
back.
    I’d always assumed she was
a picky eater, or just watching her figure or something, how much
meat she left on the plate. But after she started cooking more to her
taste, she’d wolf it down faster than me. Never put much weight
on either, except maybe some muscle. Not that I would have minded.
God made all kinds of pretty women in all kinds of bodies.
    So I’d known it, when she’d
lost her appetite for real. We were married by then, living together.
She’d tried to hide it. She had all kind of tricks. It’s
crazy how you can stir up a plate to make it look like you’ve
eaten more than you have. But she’d never let a scrap of
charred meat stay on her plate, as long as I’d known her. Until
a year before the end.
    I didn’t know what was
wrong, though, because I’m an idiot. I thought maybe she was
sad, or anxious. Stressed. Unhappy with me. Me and Juan at the flower
shop got to know each other, because I was in there almost every day
on my way home from work. I never came home late, either, not if I
could help it. Pissed my dad right off, the days I worked with him
instead of for myself, how I’d pack away my tools right at five
and head for home. It’s not what you do when you’re doing
construction, he’d say. It’s not what you do when you’re
starting your own business, he’d say. It is what you do, though, when your wife is upset and you love her more
than life itself and you want her to be happy. You show up on time
for every meal she cooks you.
    She was sick, and she hadn’t
told me. Because we didn’t have insurance. We didn’t have
insurance because I was starting my own contractor business. So she
kept quiet about how much her stomach hurt, and she didn’t know
what was wrong. I could have noticed. I should have noticed. I could
have found regular work and gotten us insured. I didn’t.
    I failed her.
    A man should know these things
about his wife.
    I put my Burger King dinner back
down on the plate, half-eaten, as sobs tried their best to work their
way through my chest. My empty house. My empty heart.
    To hell with that. Don’t
cry, don’t give in. Toughen up.
    Three deep breaths. Works
sometimes for anger, works sometimes for sorrow.
    Not this time.
     
    I cleaned for an hour or so after
dinner. Still wasn’t done, not by a long shot, but the place
looked about as bad as before King tore it up. I’d done a lot
of the specifics from the letter—my old clothes were back in a
bag in the bed of my truck, waiting for me to donate them, and I’d
done the dishes and boxed up half of them, put them in the garage in
case the house was ever full again. Tried not to think too hard about
when that might happen, how it probably never would.
    It was time for the third letter.
I sat down at the table, set out the envelopes. Two of them were
open, on my left. Seven remained, on my right. I pulled out my
folding knife, carefully opened the third. It wasn’t as hard
the third time, opening the envelope. Not quite as hard, not quite as
overwhelmingly magical. Just another step on the road to recovery. A
good step, a comfortable step. Still, I took a shot of whiskey to
steel my nerves. Courage comes in many forms, some of them liquid.
    “Well, my love,” it
started out, “your house is cleaner and it’s not empty
anymore. There’s a big metal food bowl and a big metal water
bowl out in the kitchen and I hope you love that mutt enough to let
him into bed with you. I’m so proud of you, Luke. But this next
part is going to be harder.
    “I want you to tune your
guitar. You tell everyone you’re tough, and you are, but deep
down you’re a big softie and I bet you haven’t been
playing because you remember how much I loved hearing you play.”
    Emily did, in fact, know me
better than I knew myself. I hadn’t even thought about why I
wasn’t playing anymore, but it was that. Mostly that. Also that
a guitar is a good way to let out emotions. I was having enough
trouble