Marla Shore hadn’t had a visitor in over 247 days—not that she was counting.
Since Peter died, the house had taken on an eerie kind of silence, as if it, too, had begun mourning. The fridge still buzzed. The wind still whistled. But everything else felt wrong. Empty chairs. Uneaten meals. Half-read books on the nightstand. His toothbrush was still in the cup beside hers, bristles beginning to curl like tired fingers.
She spoke to him sometimes.
Sometimes aloud. Sometimes not.
At first, it was casual. “You’d laugh at this, Pete,” she’d murmur while watching the evening news. Then it became more frequent. Whole conversations. Her voice filling the space where his used to be.
No one told her to stop.
No one was around to.
The world didn’t bother coming by. It kept turning without her, indifferent to the ache that had cracked open her chest and made a home of its own there.
It was the third Tuesday of rain. Heavy rain—the kind that blurred windows and made everything look like an oil painting left out in a storm. She had just brewed a pot of chamomile and was sinking into Peter’s old armchair when she heard it.
Knock. Knock.
She froze.
The knock wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t timid. It was steady—too steady. And it was wrong. It didn’t belong in the rhythm of her quiet house.
She waited.
Maybe it was a branch. Maybe—
Knock. Knock.
Again. And now she knew.
Someone was at the door.
Marla wrapped her cardigan tighter around her and moved through the hallway like a woman walking through a dream. At the threshold, she paused. She hadn’t spoken to a living soul face-to-face in weeks. Months? She couldn’t remember anymore.
She opened the door.
A man stood there, drenched. His coat clung to him like a second skin. No umbrella. No bag. Just his presence, heavy and still. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and rainwater dripped from the tips of his eyelashes.
Marla didn’t say anything. Neither did he.
He reached into his coat and pulled out something carefully wrapped in oilskin. He held it out to her.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Shore,” he said softly. “But I believe this is for you.”
She didn’t take it. Her heart beat louder than the rain.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He met her eyes.
“Someone who keeps promises.”
That voice—smooth, patient—made something shift in her, like a loose hinge finding its catch. She took the package, hands trembling.
It was a letter. No postage. Just her name on the front: Marla Evelyn Shore in looping, familiar handwriting.
Peter’s handwriting.
The door slammed shut behind her as the wind surged. She spun—but the stranger was already gone.
Just… gone.
Marla stared at the letter for nearly an hour. She didn’t want to open it. Because if it was real, it would hurt. And if it was fake—cruelly fake—she wasn’t sure she could survive that kind of cruelty.
But eventually, she did.
She broke the wax seal with trembling fingers. Inside was a single sheet of heavy paper, written in ink that had slightly smudged with age or water—or tears.
Marla, my love,
If you’re reading this, it means I found a way.
I don’t know how long it’s been for you, but where I am, time folds differently. Like pages in a book. I remember everything—your voice in the morning, the way you hum when you read, the way your nose crinkles when you’re about to laugh but try not to. I remember how you held my hand when I was afraid to go.
But I never really left.
Not all the way.
There’s a door between worlds. Some see it in dreams. Others in moments when the world quiets just enough. I’ve seen it. And now, through someone else, I’ve sent you this.
If you want to find me again… if you still want to—open the door.
He’ll come back.
Love you. Always.
—Peter
Marla cried for the first time in months.
Not the kind of weeping that exhausts you, but the kind that burns clean. The kind that breaks you just enough to let light in.
She didn’t sleep that night. She sat on the couch, cradling the letter like something sacred. She reread it until she could recite it backward.
By morning, she had convinced herself it was a mistake. A hoax. A sick trick. She tossed the letter onto the kitchen table, where it lay untouched for three days.
But she couldn’t forget it.
And every night, she thought she heard footsteps on the porch.
On the seventh day, just before dawn, the knock came again.
Knock. Knock.
She didn’t freeze this time. She stood. Walked. Opened the door.
The same man.
Same raincoat.
Same impossible silence around him.
“You came back,” she said, unable to keep the trembling from her voice.
“You kept the letter,” he said.
She nodded.
He extended his hand. “Do you want to see him?”
It wasn’t a question that could be answered with logic. It bypassed that entirely and went straight to her soul.
“I don’t understand. Is he alive?”
The man tilted his head, like he’d heard this question before.
“Where he is… things are different. It’s not life as you know it. But he remembers you. He asked for you.”
Marla hesitated. Her heart thundered. She glanced behind her—at the lamp she’d bought with Peter, the sweater he’d left on the back of the chair, the ordinary life they’d built together.
It was all still here. But he wasn’t.
And maybe—just maybe—he was somewhere else, waiting.
She stepped onto the porch.
“I want to go,” she said.
The man offered her his hand.
As soon as their fingers touched, the world changed.
The wind died.
The rain stopped mid-air, droplets hanging like suspended glass.
And then the porch, the house, the sky—all of it unraveled into light.
Marla opened her eyes in a field of silver grass.
The air smelled like memories—fresh lilacs, cinnamon bread, and Peter’s cologne.
Ahead, a figure sat beneath a tree with golden leaves.
He turned as she approached.
And he smiled the way only he could, all the way to his eyes.
“Hey, Mar,” he said.
And she wept.
Not from sorrow, but from recognition.
He was there. Real. Whole. Not gone. Just… elsewhere.
She sat beside him. Their hands found each other without instruction.
There were no more questions.
Not yet.
Just the wind in the grass, and the echo of a love that refused to end.
React
