LETTERS NEVER DELIVERED · Sylph
Aluma,
I have been attempting to identify the precise point at which the Motor Lodge began to feel familiar.
It was definitely not the first night. Not even when you handed me a metal key while asking questions I could not yet answer. Your trust appeared poorly justified. Mine was nonexistent.
I do not think it was when Wyatt allowed me into his workshop, either. He shouted at a machine for several minutes, then asked me to help repair it. I did not understand why shouting was necessary at an object that did not speak.
Perhaps it was the morning I left a caramel beside the counter and pretended the gesture had no significance. Or the afternoon you told me why you kept a chipped ceramic cat instead of replacing it. I remember that conversation with unusual clarity.
You keep things because they matter to you, even after they cease to be perfect.
I did not know what to do with that information when you gave it to me.
I still want to find the road that leads to my family. That remains true. I think about my mother and sister more often than I tell you. Some nights I can remember the arrangement of the rooms in our home more clearly than the sound of their voices, and it frightens me.
Yet when I hear your footsteps crossing the office floor, I am relieved before I have identified the reason.
These facts are not contradictory. I am learning that two homes can occupy a person's thoughts without diminishing one another.
I had intended this note to be shorter.
There is a caramel in the fold. It may have become attached to the paper. I apologize.
Sylph